LOS ANGELES, February 26, 2012 – At The Burlingame California Republican Party 2012 Spring Convention Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spoke during a luncheon to the GOP leaders and members of the state party convention.
“You cannot follow the recent Republican practice of writing off our largest state and imagine that you are going to run an American campaign,” the former House speaker told California delegates to the state GOP party convention, meeting outside of San Francisco California. “There will not be any lockdown before we get to California…. I want you to know as the nominee I will campaign consistently in California.”
The real question is why? Is Newt talking to a group of California Dreamers?
California Republicans will not win this year’s 55 Electoral College votes. We are not winners here because we have not prepared for a presidential candidate to come help us build up and spend their money instead of asking for our money.
Most presidential candidates come here to do fundraisers and leave. Most of these events are private and the public may not know that a given candidate was even in town. So who is going to step up for a change and help our state mount a serious challenge to the Democrats?
The RNC has always just written us off, so what is going to make this year any different? California Republicans have not won the Electoral College vote here since Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, it takes numbers and money to win and we have neither.
How does California elect the President? The California process is easy. We get 55 electoral votes based on having 2 senators and 53 members of the House of Representatives. That is the most of any state in the union. Understand, the person who becomes president of the United States is not always the candidate who wins the most votes from the people on Election Day.
Instead, the election of the president of the United States it is a two-step process.
First, voters cast ballots on Election Day in each state. In nearly every state, the candidate who gets the most votes wins the “electoral votes” for that state, and also gets that number of pledged voters (or “electors”) in the Electoral College.
Second, the “electors” from each of the 50 states gather in December and vote for president. The person who receives a majority of votes from the Electoral College becomes President. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_ec.htm
Newt Gingrich gave a great “yea, yea” speech to a crowd of people who are well aware that the majority of California voters will not be voting for a Republican candidate in 2012. We are the minority in California, and overcoming the massed ground troops of the Democrats in this state is virtually unthinkable.
The Democrats’ machine is already promoting and supporting Barack Obama big time throughout the state. So what is the plan of action for the California Republican Party (CRP)? Republicans have acknowledged that they have a problem with their current position, but it’s not clear they’ve done much to improve their situation.
The Democrats are excited to see the upcoming changes that will help them gain seats in a highly intense election presidential year, especially with President Barack Obama and the economy on a so-called upswing. But capturing 25 seats nationwide and retaking House control after two years in the minority? That’s nothing but ‘California Dreaming’, some Republicans have said.
Yet is it the Democrats that are dreaming?
Conservatives are still the minority in this state and there is no plan of action. Constituents of this state have no faith in the CRP and are feeling no connection to their nonexistent plan of action.
Currently the Republican Party has won a net of 63 seats, seized the majority and elected Rep. John Boehner of Ohio as house speaker. The GOP currently holds 242 seats to 192 for the Democrats with one vacancy coming from former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona seat, which will be filled in a special election June 12, 2012. Despite the numbers that are before us, the Democrats still feel very comfortable about their envisioned gains in California.
This is not a cheap state to try to win. Meg Whitman spent 170 million dollars and still lost the governorship in 2010. Is Newt ready to spend that? Well the crowd needs a cheerleader with the bag of rocks we have here. But, in the end there will be no cigars for the CRP when it comes to winning those highly coveted 55 electoral votes.
Maybe this is why we are called “California Dreamers.” We are dreaming for a better day and Newt Gingrich is claiming he has the answer to finding that day for the California Republican Party. The question is does he know the rough roads that the CRP currently faces?
Probably not.
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