Turning California purple

The one-sided war being fought by conservatives in California ought to animate every conservative in America. It isn’t as if there isn’t a conservative base. In 2020, six million Californians voted for Donald Trump, up from 4.5 million four years earlier. This total exceeded that of any other state, narrowly beating #2 Florida (5.3 million) and #3 Texas (5.2 million). This total also exceeded the entire Republican registration in California at the time, 5.3 million. California may be a Democratic stronghold, but there are millions of Californians who’ve had it with Democratic rule. With crime, homelessness, violence, and the cost-of-living all rising since November 2020, one would think Democrats would be starting to lose their grip. So why aren’t they?

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To answer this question, it’s useful to compare registration by party in California today to where it was 10 years ago, and then identify geographically where the Democrats have increased their numbers, as well as the places where they have lost ground. In October 2022 there were 10.3 million registered Democrats in California, and 5.2 million registered Republicans. Ten years earlier, there were only 7.9 million registered Democrats in California, and 5.4 million registered Republicans. It isn’t hard to see that trend. Democrats went from having a 14 percent registration advantage over Republicans 10 years ago to having a 23 point advantage today. Statewide, that is an insurmountable barrier. But what about individual counties? Were Republicans successful in any of them?

The answer to this is unequivocal, and revealing, because it echoes what is in store for the rest of the country if the Democrats – and the RINOs – aren’t stopped.

[Ahem. “The RINOs” aren’t the problem. They could be part of the solution if out-of-state conservatives stop imposing purity filters on other states. California is never going to be Texas, so the key to rebuilding the GOP brand is to form ever-broader coalitions. Demanding ideological purity won’t work; thanks to the massive urbanization of SoCal and the Bay area, there aren’t enough ‘true conservatives’ to win *anything*. Many of the middle class that moderated the urban cores have fled, too, using their resources to settle in red states or at least rational states. And Republican revival will have to come through massive conversions, and that requires flexibility and understanding, not ideological rigidity. Anyone sniffing at “RINOs” at the start of the process is simply not serious. — Ed]

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