competition

The California Republican Party called yesterday wanting money and I told them they were boneheads because they won't allow Independents to cross over and vote in our primary next Tuesday, Feb. 5.

"It's pretty hard to build a big tent if you don't let anybody else in," said Dan Schnur, a veteran Republican political consultant. "It doesn't make sense for a party that wants to and needs to broaden its base to throw this kind of obstacle in the path of an independent voter who wants to hang out with us."

Unaffiliated voters are comprise 19.3% of the electorate, along with 42.7% registered Democrats and 33.6% registered Republicans. So, doing the math, that means 62% of registered California voters will be eligible to vote in the Democratic primary double the number of eligible Republicans.

Who are the idiots responsible for this decision? Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman of Tustin and Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines of Clovis. Why are we afraid of competing? Our ideas versus their ideas. We usually win.

"Republicans have made the serious, perhaps fatal, error of shutting independent voters out of their primary," said Garry South, who was a top advisor to former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. "The thing we know about independents is, when they choose to vote in a primary, they tend to stay with that party" in the general election."