If Donnelly becomes Brown’s reelection opponent by finishing second in the balloting for governor on June 3, Wilson and other California Republicans worry that the state GOP’s hemorrhage of registered voters, now just 28 percent of the electorate, will accelerate.ĭONNELLY DEMAGOGUERY: Feeding Kashkari’s debate argument about offending minorities, Donnelly in recent weeks not only became the only member of the Assembly to vote against a ban on state-run souvenir shops selling Confederate memorabilia but also compared President Obama to Hitler and Stalin because of his gun-control policies. “With Tim Donnelly on the ballot, it would be a losing campaign, risking injury to our party and our state and to other Republican candidates who deserve to win.” “Keeping public focus on the real and important issues facing California will require a candidate who does not have to defend Tim Donnelly’s bizarre votes and statements or his irresponsible personal behavior,” Wilson said in a written statement. Also joining Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Representative Darrell Issa was former governor Pete Wilson, who expressed his support for Kashkari by denigrating State Assemblymember Donnelly in unusually harsh language for a party elder: That’s why former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice last week became the latest member of the Republican elite class to endorse Kashkari, a former investment banker who ran President Bush’s financial bailout program. As a political matter, however, the intraparty feud is significant in reflecting the national conflict between establishment Republicans, traditionally in the cultural and intellectual mainstream of the country, and the more extremist Tea Party, which, since the first days of President Obama’s presidency, has pushed the GOP further and further to the right, to the point where the fundamental value of political compromise (let alone science) carries little weight. WHY IT MATTERS: At first glance, the Kashkari-Donnelly matchup is simply a campaign clown show of scarce importance beyond the entertainment value to be derived by journalists and others with barren lives. “Go home!” bellowed one lout in the audience, dominated by Donnelly supporters. “Tim, to be direct,” Kashkari said, in the most splenetic exchange of the “debate,” interrupted by frequent commercial breaks, “in the last few months, you’ve managed to denigrate Latinos, African Americans, Jews, Muslims, Hindus.” Moments before airtime, they marked the gravity of the occasion by seating and dressing up a skeleton in a shirt and tie to represent the Democratic incumbent, to the great amusement of several hundred folks on hand to watch the historic event. drive-time blabberfest hosted by two Limbaugh wannabes. Last week’s face-off between establishment entrant Neel Kashkari and Tea Party contestant Tim Donnelly took place on The John and Ken Show, an L.A. That two AM-radio right-wing loudmouths hosted the only debate between the leading Republican contenders to challenge Governor Jerry Brown is testimony to what a tarnished booby prize the GOP nomination has become. ONE-MAN SHOW: Tim Donnelly, a Tea Party member running for governor, has rankled and alienated a number of his fellow Republicans.
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