Dear Readers: A parody of a “Gladiator” quote to kick off the Election 2012 Blogging Cycle! 
To be honest, I am deeply disappointed in most of the California results. At this point, I feel toward California the same way I felt about Michigan when I left it in 1985 — I am being treated as a second class drone by my state’s representatives and my hard work is being redistributed to the politically connected. One of the site’s friends (thank, Roger) sent me this today, showing that others are coming to the same conclusion: CA Solar-Panel Maker to Close a Factory and Delay Expansion
Just seven weeks ago, Solyndra opened Fab 2, a $733 million factory in Fremont, Calif., to make its high-tech solar panels. The new plant was supposed to be the first phase of a rapid expansion of the company.
Instead, Solyndra has decided to shutter the old plant and postpone plans to expand Fab 2, which was built with a $535 million federal loan guarantee.
Frankly, I am pressing to move to Virginia. My husband was very sweet yesterday, as this was about the third time in a year I have gone through the reasons for this relocation. He did point out some of the good news — both tax increases associated with San Diego went down to flaming failure. As The Liberator Today notes, it is obvious the citizens do not trust our City Council — for damn good reasons
One of the successful arguments against Proposition D was that we couldn’t trust this city council and mayor to deliver on their promises to reform city government. The day after Prop D went down to defeat, Todd Gloria introduced legislation to ban Walmart Supercenters in San Diego. And the Democrats on the City Council mimic the underhanded methods used by their fellow partisans in Congress in passing Obamacare.
Sarah Bond, CEO of the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition, published this letter to our group yesterday, which also sums up a lot of positives:
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Fantastic returns across the nation. Historic. As of writing this note, Republicans have gained 57 seats in the House (with more likely this week) and will hold the majority. We look forward to holding their feet to the fire. Tea Party activism is not about cheerleading Republicans…its about protecting the taxpayers, and that is what we will demand of our lawmakers.
But alas, California. Some important local wins, like defeating Prop D and passing Prop A, some city council wins, etc. Looks like Andy Vidak will take Costa’s seat in the Central Valley. But let’s not sugar coat it, we took some serious hits. With the passage of Prop 25 and the defeat of Prop 23, we can expect things to get much harder for families and businesses here in the Golden State.
THE UP SIDE?
We slammed the door pretty hard on the RINO’s. We are taking the bitter medicine in order to make it clear that mediocre candidates have no place in California. If you are a tax traitor, we will reject you. If you think you can simply buy your way into office, the voters of this state will send you packing.
The Union owned Democrats now run California and the fallout from the coming economy will belong to THEM. The simple truth is that things will have to get harder before the paradigm can sift. Like Obama’s sweeping socialist agenda waking up the tea party movement nationwide, the Jerry Brown era will change California in ways the left never saw coming.
NEXT?
Taking a much needed break. We all need to focus on our families for the holidays. We’ll be on stand-by for the lame duck Congress, but it’s time to recharge our batteries.
We will be looking at taking the lessons from this election and shifting our strategy. Rebuilding our coalition state-wide and asking more from all of you in terms of developing “districts” in the county.
We need folks who speak and WRITE in Spanish for Hispanic outreach.
We need to fundraise so we can organize our own campaigns in 2012. No more waiting around for Sacramento based consulting firms to dole out small batches of yard signs just days before an election. We’ll do it ourselves…and we’ll do it better.
We need folks to volunteers to be lawmaker “liaisons”…in charge of tracking our elected officials and keeping the community up to date on their actions.
We need someone to track and communicate with volunteers.
We need voter fraud specialists.
And, most of all, we need everyone to keep the faith. We forced the left to spend more and fight harder than they ever imagined, and we will only get stronger and better at challenging the Big Government agenda. We have nothing to lose by defending California…and THAT makes us powerful.
God Bless all of you, and we’ll see you out on the battlefield.
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W.C. Varones highlights a few other positives in his piece, Morning in America:
The bright spots in California were the redistricting propositions and the landslide defeats of tax-hiking weasels Abel Maldonado and Mike Villines. If they run for anything in the future, we will haunt their campaigns.
One of his co-bloggers, Jr. Deputy Accountant, has beat me to the punch by already relocating in the wake of California election results:
As some might already know, I self-exiled from failing, miserable California (San Francisco to be exact) a mere week ago, packing everything I could fit into my car including my elderly cat and setting the GPS for east. I found a sweet little hideout in the Maryland suburbs just minutes from the hustle, bustle and outright sin of Washington DC that keeps me close enough to the action without getting any in my eye.
Fellow SLOB Left Coast Rebel had a great Nov. 2nd report from Golden Hall and a GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS election summary.
Photo by Left Coast Rebel
Reasons to celebrate:
* Nothing says b*tchslap like the biggest GOP victory in the House since 1938 and the biggest gain of any party in the House since 1948. How’s that for a mandate?
* Marco Rubio looked extremely presidential and is sure to be a future leader for the nation. Marco Rubio for President?
* Rand Paul’s huge victory. That, in itself, says it all.
* A new capitalist caucus in the Senate that will include Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Ron Johnson, Tom Coburn and others. These guys have the potential to control the agenda in the senate.
* Paul Ryan (this perhaps is one of the most important aspects of the House rout last night), will be the chair of the House Finance Committee.Things that stink on ice:
* Joe Miller’s likely defeat.
* Ken Buck’s likely defeat, too.
* California, for the most part, across the board.
* Sharron Angle’s defeat (this one makes me sad).
Beers with Demos notes: We still have Harry Reid to kick around!Frankly, better him than Chuck Shumer as Senate Leader (Chucky gets on my very last nerve). BwD also has a fascinating look at a leftist perspective on the election results: China – the New City on the Hill
We have found that when statists talk about “thinking big” it is with exclusive respect to government programs. “Thinking big” in the context of expanding opportunities via the expansion of liberty are foreign concepts. What’s wrong with greatness? What is so unseemly about being and continuing to strive for exceptionalism? We note with irony that the author chooses two beacons of “countries on the rise” (China and Brazil), two countries that are not afraid to exploit their natural resources, a concept we have developed a complete aversion to over the past few decades.
Once again, HillBuzz has the essential pick-me up yesterday, The wisdom of voters and the faith in Democracy:
Harry Reid remains in the Senate to be the face of incompetence he’s always been. He’ll be an albatross around Obama’s neck for the next two years, and vice versa. Barbara Boxer returns to the Senate to remain the poster child of incompetence for the party. Moonbeam Jerry Brown has become the Governor of California, and will further run it into the ground in the next two years. Barney Frank remains a corrupt clown whose ties to the economic collapse continues to be a sore point for Democrats.
If any of these people had lost their elections, it’s true voters and America would have been better off. But, in terms of 2012 strategy, keeping them in office hurts Democrats as a party more than it actually affects America. These people are the faces of the party that continuously turn Independents away from Democrats…and they will keep doing that for another two years.
2012 is when there’s a score of vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in the Senate. This is when Republicans will take that half of Congress, and will expand their reach in the House, provided they stay true to the fiscal conservatism that is supposedly at their core and show stamina and muscle in battling Obama.
As for the White House, this current president did not receive the hand President Clinton was dealt: he will not have a Republican-controlled legislature to use as a punching bag. He can’t, like Truman, run against a do-nothing Congress.
The Anchoress also had a solid, post-election read today in PJM: Tea Party Candidates Must Learn the Art of Fencing(The Young Prince takes fencing lessons, so this was a great platform to express some key, how-to-handle-the-media concepts.
Two things to round-out my round-up:
1) I want to thank everyone who donated TIME and MONEY to the YES ON 23! Campaign. We were outspent 3-to-1 by an elitist army with financial connections to the green industry, and still managed 40% of the vote. We did all we could, and can be at peace knowing this when other people realize the terrible “Texas Polluters” were actually critical state “Job Creators”. I especially wanted to thank Martin Fricke for his solid phone-bank reports.
2) The Queen Mother is coming for a visit next week, and I have a HOT for-profit project. Blogging will be incredibly light. I am off to beg Professor Athena for review of the results from a finance perspective! My more regular posting should commence in 10-14 days — but do check back for updates and links.
No matter what STATE I live in, I plan to HOLD THE LINE for 2012 success via the Tea Party movement.
Leslie, you deserve a Purple Heart now and perhaps a Medal of Honor later if Californians, perhaps teetering on collapse, ever put down the grass and get of their ass.
But Are you sure you want to go to VA – it’s not far from GA. See, e.g., http://hoguenews.com/?p=9307.
BTW, Hank Johnson was reelected.
[...] states.No wonder they are fighting so hard to sabotage voter ID/proof-of-citizenship requirements.I will have my vengence, in this this STATE or the NEXT! « Temple of MutTrackback URLTags: DREAM Act, Harry Reid, Immigration, Michelle Malkin: Harry Reid’s [...]
I AM SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW. I never believed in “conspiracy theories” or even voter fraud. I thought – how can there be voter fraud unless you have a fake ID? Little did I know…you don’t need ANY ID. Here’w what happened to me on Tuesday night -
So, I go to my polling place and pull out my ID, just like I did for the last election. “On, no, we don’t need to see that” I’m told. “What?”, I ask, “How do you know that I am who I say I am?” “We don’t” was the response. What the heck? “That’s up to the Registrar of Voters”, I’m told. So, I say, “what happens if someone shows up saying they are me and then I come in and try to vote?”. “Well, you wouldn’t be able to. You’d have to call the Registrar of Voters to correct it”. Now what kind of mis-guided crap is THAT? WHO IS MINDING THE STORE????
And I always thought people who talked about voter fraud were just conspiracy theorists. ‘Fraid not…it’s for real.
And I’m hearing on the news now that the reason CA went so completely Democratic this time was due to the Hispanic vote. Hmmmm…is there a link here?
Great post.
With respect to the Hispanics, I agree that we need to reach out. But we have to get the border actually secured. This may sound counter-intuitive, but doing so takes the anti-illegal issue off the table. Hispanics wrongly believe that it is a symptom of racism in the Republican party. But if the border were actually secured, we could lead the fight for a fair and comprehensive reform of immigration. This would give the lie to the racism argument. Hispanics, who don’t seems particularly enamored of Democrat positions on abortion, gay marriage and burdening small businesses would move to the GOP in sufficient numbers to totally wreck the Democrat coalition.
Thank you for the excellent wrap-up, Godess! What I am consistently seeing is that those of us who are staying in California is that we are going to KEEP FIGHTING. We will tip the scales…we just need to stop doing the same things and expecting different results.
THREE PRINCIPLES TO KEEP THE MOVEMENT ALIVE:
Congratulations on the historic win last Tuesday, Liberty Lovers, Now the real work Begins
As you must have observed the establishment(parties, media, think tanks) is quite worried, to put it mildly by our rise, there were talks of co-opting the movement even before the elections and they will continue. Hence it makes sense to take preemptive steps to avoid the conditions which lead to irrelevance of most popular movements.
1. KEEP IT LOCAL: The biggest strength of TEA Party Movement is it’s nameless, faceless nature. The establishment will try its hardest to put a face on the movement and discredit it sooner or later. Hence we must avoid the temptation of making it more organized and systematic. It started as different people coming together for some common issues with different views on other issues and it must remain so if we want to keep it effective.
2. NO MIDDLEMEN: In the course of the movement many individuals have risen to give voice to common concerns and they have done a commendable job. However , if experience has taught us anything it is this: Power Corrupts. No single individual or group of individuals must have the power to speak for the whole movement. As the new Congress meets and starts working to repeal Obamacare and cut spending, there will be times when it would seem that they are not delivering. We must respond to it in the same way we responded to the Congress earlier: By calling the Reps and Senators individually and being vigilant individually.
3.KEEP THE FOCUS: Finally, we must be focused on the core issue that binds us all FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. Limited Government and Free Markets necessarily flow from it. If government is fiscally responsible it must be limited and markets will be free.
Thanks, Leslie! Hope you guys had a great time on Saturday. Please don’t leave us!
Mut,
I am grieved for your having left one dying civilization for another. Michigan may experience a renaissance under Gov. Nerdinator (Rick Snyder), but the crisis here is so deep that it may be too late.
VA may become you. I found it to be beautiful. Paved over now and settled by federal workers, however, it may have lost the charm it once had.
My own musings lean toward central Texas – san Antonio or Austin – in the fond hope that it will take more to kill the love of freedom in Texas culture than the Left can muster.