Conservative Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who has represented Irvine and the rest of the 70th Assembly District for about six years, lost his race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday. It wasn't much of a surprise. Carly Fiorina, the winner, is wealthy and well connected to the big political donors in the state.

But DeVore campaigned hard and built an impressive fundraising base of his own, albeit from smaller donors. Many of them saw DeVore, an advocate of nuclear power and a Tea Party favorite, as their only option. DeVore's approach to governing is simple: there ought to be less of it.
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There had been talk of this run for months as his Senate campaign collapsed. But, is it enough?

By winning the Republican primary resoundingly against two tough and skilled opponents, Carly has proven herself to be a tenacious and energetic campaigner whose competitive spirit was on full display Election Night. Having worked with Carly for almost a year, I have learned that you can’t bridle Carly’s energy – you just hold on and go with the flow. Voters will learn soon enough that Carly is the Mohamed Ali of 2010: she’ll “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Most importantly, Carly will defeat Barbara Boxer in November.

How will we achieve this Republican version of the impossible dream? The answer is simple, really. It’s the same way we always win, which is to run a complete campaign that measures itself again four basic elements of successful campaigns: the candidate, the issue environment, organization and money.

I didn’t just make this up; I learned it from the best, Stu Spencer.
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If you want to win in California, read it all.

With all of this as prologue, it's been interesting to see Romney work to repair relationships with his rivals. He not only campaigned for McCain during the general election in 2008, but he has endorsed him in the Arizona Senate primary.

Yesterday, in a USA Today op-ed criticizing Obama's handling of the BP oil spill, Romney slipped in the following two paragraphs:

We saw leadership on Sept. 11, 2001. Then as now, black billows seemed to come from the center of the earth. Lives had been lost. The environmental impact was immeasurable. The looming economic impact from lost tourism was incalculable. Into the crisis walked Rudy Giuliani. While that was an incomparable human tragedy, how the mayor led New York City to recover is a useful model for the president.
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Because Rudy is doing events in New Hampshire. And, head to head with Rudy, Romney will lose the GOP nomination.

Fresh off her decisive victory in the Republican Senate primary this week, Carly Fiorina found herself in the national spotlight Thursday — for criticizing her opponent's hairdo.

Chatting with an aide and having her makeup applied before a TV interview Wednesday, the newly minted GOP nominee was caught dissing Sen. Barbara Boxer's hairstyle — unaware that the camera was rolling. Fiorina said she heard from a friend that day who saw Boxer on TV. The person "said what everyone says, 'God, what is that hair?' " Fiorina said, letting out a long laugh. "So yesterday."

At that point, someone pointed out to Fiorina she was being recorded, and a look of "uh-oh" came over the candidate's face. The four-plus-minute video of Fiorina, in which she also knocks GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman's decision to appear on conservative Sean Hannity's TV program so soon after the primary, is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cTk3XIrZ3w.
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A Gaffe or a calculated ploy?

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has compared billionaire GOP nominee Meg Whitman's saturation campaign effort to that of a Nazi minister of propaganda.

"It's like Goebbels," Brown told Doug Sovern of KCBS radio in the Bay Area, referring to Joseph Goebbels. "Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."

A Brown spokesman did not dispute the statement but said Brown does not believe Whitman is comparable to Goebbels. Whitman's campaign manager Jillian Hasner called the remarks "deeply offensive."

The remarks, posted on Sovern's blog Wednesday, were made before Tuesday's primary when Sovern ran into Brown while bike-riding.
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No mudslinging, eh Jerry?

Long pilloried for being soft on illegal immigration, top Democratic officials have concluded there’s only one way they can hope to pass a comprehensive immigration bill:

Talk more like Republicans.

They’re seizing on the work of top Democratic Party operatives who, after a legislative defeat in 2007, launched a multiyear polling project to craft an enforcement-first, law-and-order, limited-compassion pitch that now defines the party’s approach to the issue.
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No matter how much the DEM LEFT sugracoats illegal immigration, they support amnesty.
The 12 million people who unlawfully reside the country? Call them “illegal immigrants,” not “undocumented workers,” the pollsters say.

Brown boasted about his legendary frugality. "I've only spent $200,000 so far. I have 20 million in the bank. I'm saving up for her." It's true – his stay-on-the-sidelines, bare-bones primary run cost him almost nothing, at least in California political terms. But he also fretted about the impact of all those eBay dollars in Whitman's very deep pockets. "You know, by the time she's done with me, two months from now, I'll be a child-molesting…" He let the line trail off. "She'll have people believing whatever she wants about me." Then he went off on a riff I didn't expect.

"It's like Goebbels," referring to Hitler's notorious Minister of Propaganda. "Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."
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Jerry Brown is a SENILE fruitcake

Since this photo surfaced the other day and the kiddies on the left suggested Sarah Palin may have had some breast augmentation, much amusement and discussion has followed, with even the guttersnipes at Media Matters getting their panties in a knot.

Well thanks to tipster Mark, we can now lay this absurd rumor to rest. As can be seen in this photo taken in Kuwait in July 2007, more than a year before most people ever heard of her, they're all real, baby.
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Wow!

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) was injured by a mohair goat on Thursday during a press conference to highlight subsidies to the mohair industry.
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Uh Oh!
The goat nicked Weiner's right hand with one of its pointy, foot-long horns, hard enough to draw blood.

Weiner was speaking to reporters in a park near the Rayburn House Office Building, where he was joined by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and two young male mohair goats, Lancelot and Arthur.

In the election itself, the Republican right was repudiated by its own voters in California's last closed primary at virtually every level. Look at the endorsements of the California Republican Assembly and the results:

Governor: Steve Poizner – Lost 27 to 64 percent
Lt Governor: Sam Aanestad – Lost 31 to 43 percent
Attorney General: John Eastman – Lost 34 to 47 percent
Proposition 14: No – Republicans voted yes
US Senate: Chuck DeVore – Ran third with only 19 percent

So the Republican electorate gave the right wing candidates on average about 30 percent of the GOP primary vote. The CRA suffered a personal repudiation when its former president, Ken Mettler, was crushed 27 to 68 percent in an Assembly primary.
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The Far Right has lost touch with California voters and they were repudiated for more mainstream candidates

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) isn't going back to the Senate next year after losing his bid for renomination, but he wants a hand in selecting who will take his seat.

Bennett will endorse business consultant Tim Bridgewater (R), according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Bennett joins 2 other candidates in backing Bridgewater, who faces attorney Mike Lee (R) in the June 22 primary.
Bridgewater has support from most of the UT GOP establishment, while Lee has backing from Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks, the conservative group closely affiliated with Tea Party movements. The Club for Growth spent about $177K in defeating Bennett, but they haven't picked a candidate in the primary between Bridgewater and Lee.
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Payback time for Bennett.

Old vs. new. Public sector vs. private. Three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer vs. Republican U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina, the former CEO of tech giant Hewlett-Packard, was pushing California voters to make those connections Wednesday as she launched her general election campaign at a state GOP victory rally held at the Hilton hotel in Anaheim.
Fiorina also answered Boxer's debate challenge, made just hours after Fiorina was declared the winner last night, by saying with some bravado, "Barbara, I'll debate you anytime anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, we can debate once a week."

The Republican, however, made one debate demand, that they schedule one meeting in Mendota in the Central Valley, "where unemployment is skyrocketing because the federal government has decided that families don't need water."
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These debates will happen after Labor Day and only after Boxer falls behind in the polls.

A day after Meg Whitman won the Republican primary for governor, Democratic nominee Jerry Brown kicked off his general-election campaign by mocking his wealthy rival's lavish campaign spending and her history as chief executive of EBay.

"She talks about waste and abuse," Brown told reporters at a morning news conference in downtown Los Angeles. "She paid herself $120 million, and then EBay had to lay off 10% of its workforce. Now, is that waste and abuse? Is that what you want?"

The state attorney general, who faced only token opposition in the Democratic primary, ridiculed Whitman's spending of $71 million of her personal fortune on the campaign so far, suggesting it shows she would lack fiscal discipline as governor.

"Whitman only has a history of spending money wildly to get whatever she wants," Brown said. "I have a history of reining in my desire to get this or get that, or spend this, in the campaign or the government."
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Jerry Brown is a moron.

Speaking to hundreds of buoyant Republicans at a victory rally Wednesday in Anaheim, Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring laid out the party’s theme going forward — that their historically diverse ticket featured new faces with fresh ideas, while the Democrats represented the status quo.

“It’s clear this election this year is going to come down to the party of the past versus the party of the future,” he said. “Have you seen the relics the Democrats nominated last night?”

He joked that U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer was first elected when the TV show “The A-Team” was on the air and that gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown’s voter registration card was written in Roman numerals.

Meanwhile, Republicans nominated two women to their ticket’s top spots, as well as a Latino candidate for lieutenant governor and an African American candidate for secretary of State.

“The Republican party has nominated a historic ticket,” Nehring said. “This is a ticket that looks like California.
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And, will win

The top prosecutors in Los Angeles and San Francisco will face off to replace California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

San Francisco County District Attorney Kamala Harris was the top Democratic vote-getter Tuesday among a field that included Facebook privacy officer Chris Kelly, who sank more than $12 million from his personal fortune into the campaign.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley captured the GOP nomination over state Sen. Tom Harman and former law school dean John Eastman, who was supported by tea party activists.
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Crime, prisons and the death penalty will be prime issues.

Now here's some news: Sen. Barbara Boxer is challenging new GOP Senate nominee Carly Fiorina to a series of debates.

Wait a minute, we're dizzy. An incumbent wants to debate a challenger? And a challenger who is very well-spoken at that. Quick, you political junkies: When was the last time THAT happened?

Said Boxer campaign czar Rose Kapolczynski Tuesday night:

"Tonight we also have invited Fiorina to join us in publicly debating the many important issues facing California and our nation. We are ready to start meeting immediately to discuss mutually acceptable arrangements."

In her victory speech Tuesday, Fiorina said "a loud and cynical critic of America's military" and a "bitter partisan who has said much but accomplished little."
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Boxer will have to explain her own finances, where she now lives – and what about voting in Riverside County?

These debates I want to see and hear!

Some of Sarah Palin’s riskiest endorsements scored major victories Tuesday for the former Alaska governor, showing off her power in Republican primaries.

Palin had four primary endorsements in play – Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Terry Branstad and Cecile Bledsoe – and three won or moved on to a runoff.

Palin served different roles for each candidate – sometimes spotlighting conservatives not well known to the national scene while at others validating conservative credentials to an unsure grassroots and even stepping in to deflect nasty attacks.

Perhaps Palin’s most powerful demonstration came in South Carolina, where her endorsement propelled a major swing in the polls for Haley’s primary campaign for governor and sustained the state representative through accusations of two separate affairs.
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Presidential politics for 2012 has already started as Sarah Palin moves about the lower 48.