The CA 4th: Ground Zero in the battle for the future of the Republican Party
Holly and I attended a recent South Placer Republican Women Federated (Holly is a past 1st VP of the club) luncheon at Roseville’s Sierra Oaks Country Club at which the candidates for John Doolittle’s (R-embattled) California 4th District Congressional Seat were scheduled to speak. It wasn’t exactly a debate but it did reveal a lot.
For those of you who do not know Doolittle has elected to remove himself from the FBI’s to-do list by retiring from office, or at least he won’t be sitting in the chair. He is however working hard to hang on to some control over what the person who does sit in that chair does. I will explain, but first meet the candidates.
Suzanne Jones: A conservative NorCal native she is a solid enough and well-rounded person. Her husband is US Army retired and she traveled extensively with him to various postings, including some substantial time in the Middle East. She is well educated and holds degrees in biology and law; she accurately and rightly blasted the Republican Party for “drifting to the left” and believes in the Constitutional notion of citizen legislators. Calling the other candidates “one dimensional” and blasting them for being business as usual she says that, in her words, it is time for the CA 4th to “choose from the mainstream of America.” The note I scribbled to myself was “she’s the Ron Paul of Placer County”… sounds good on the surface, not a prayer of winning and would be eaten alive on Capitol Hill if she won.
Ted “Call me Terbo” Terbolizard: You read that right. He is an entertainer and advertising guy from Mountain View who gives the impression of being in constant search for the next full-length mirror. With a summer white suit, black silk pocket square, bolo tie and mink cuff links (yes, mink) he is nearly a dead ringer for Bat Masterson. A regular old west dandy indeed. I am sure that he has positions and opinions about something but is very much the center of his own universe and never really mentioned any of them. His main platform is that he likes little towns in the hills, has been to Washington, DC and likes to spend money on clothes. My take is that he’s just out on a little narcissistic lark.
Doug Ose: Not much to say about Doug. We know him from his stint in congress from the neighboring California 3rd (now held by Dan Lungren). Ose’s chief issue is that he lives close by the 4th district. As I have reported in this space previously, the Ose campaign is (according to my sources and observations) a surrogate campaign for the Doolittle wing of the party. Despite the angry missives and denials hurled at me when I reported that Doolittle’s old chief of staff Richard Robinson would be running Ose’s campaign, Robinson did indeed get the gig. My sources also tell me that a great deal of money is being funneled into the Ose treasury from the Doolittle wing. One may ponder the reasons but they kind of come into focus when you realize that one of Tom McClintock’s major platform planks is to reject any and all earmarks and that Doolittle was number two at the hog trough for pork (second only to Democrat John Murtha of Pennsylvania). The fury with which they attack McClintock reveals the true nature of the Ose campaign… different guy than Doolittle, but same store and open for business.
Tom McClintock: He lives in NorCal with his family, his mom has a house in SoCal and he is a SoCal Senator. The big criticism of him is that he “lives outside the district.” Big whoop. I live in Lincoln and work in Albany, New York, I spend enough time in both to not only be aware of the issues and concerns of people, but actually am in a better position to analyze them and offer up ideas because I have the broad perspective. The residency thing is a red herring. From Tom we heard a scolding that the GOP had “squandered Reagan’s legacy” and urged the “Reaganauts” to take the party back. Not a surprising thing to hear from him because McClintock’s biggest problem is the GOP. Sadly the state party is not interested in reform, in the immortal words of Mel Brooks’ fictional Governor William J. Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles: “We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs gentlemen!” Or, as McClintock characterized the race for the CA 4th, “…ground zero for the battle over the future of the Republican Party.”
He’s right. As in the Recall we voters find ourselves having to fight the selfish interests of our own party leadership. It is the business as usual GOP who gave us the catastrophic Schwarzenegger Administration and it is the business as usual GOP now trying to hijack the CA 4th. First they torpedoed Eric Egland then Rico Oller and now they are counting on Doug Ose to keep the cafeteria line moving at the pig trough.