Morning in conservative country

This past Saturday morning at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club was

an eye-opening reminder that there are at least two distinct kinds of

Republicans.

The ones I’m more familiar with can be defined most easily as

“moderate.” They are the ones who are in line with the GOP’s stand on

fiscal and governmental matters, who are pro-business and believe in

property rights. At the same time, they tend to be relatively

middle-of-the road socially.

Lacking that, they think of themselves as pragmatists. And their

political line of thinking is that the Republican party in California

continues to lose statewide elections because it is too far to the

“right,” it alienates women with its anti-abortion stance and it does

not do enough to reach out to minorities -- Latinos in particular --

who share many of their values.

We’ve all heard complaints about how the “right wing” of the party

has hijacked it. These are the folks who are saying that.

I received a lot of my schooling on this point of view from a

Ventura County councilman who rose to politics right when I was

beginning to cover government in this state. He believed the party

needed to reach out to more people -- and thus more voters.

Makes sense, no?

Well, the people gathered for the Principles over Politics meeting

would say, “No.”

Emphatically.

Started by former Assemblyman Gil Ferguson and his wife, Anita,

the group has been meeting for nearly 20 years to assail weak

thinking and wasteful government. Typically, its attacks are aimed at

Democrats, but “middle of the road” Republicans aren’t spared.

About 120 persons were gathered for the November monthly

breakfast, most likely to hear Cal State Fullerton professor Barbara

Stone dish out thoughts on the state and national elections.

And dish she did. The idea that former Los Angeles Mayor Dick

Riordan would have run away with the governor’s race and trounced

Gov. Gray Davis? False, she said, stressing that conservative

Republicans would not have voted for him.

It’s that kind of intransigence, of course, that has moderate

Republicans grousing that the right-wing of the party has hijacked

the GOP.

Her comments were generally “against the conventional wisdom.”

There was no reason to think the Republicans would not win more seats

in the House, she said, because the old thinking that the party of a

sitting president loses seats is based on that president having swept

representatives into office. But President Bush did not have a

sweeping win in 2000, which meant that more first-term Republican

members of Congress won their seats on their own merits and therefore

were not susceptible to defeat.

She also pointed out -- this should ring a fair number of bells --

that Orange County Republicans in the past could be counted on to

vote in such numbers that they would balance out, and even outweigh,

Democratic votes in the much larger Los Angeles County. That isn’t

true anymore, Stone said, and is a one reason why the Republicans

failed to win a single statewide seat.

It was interesting stuff, and an interesting group of people.

A SILVER LINING

Stone’s point about the decline of the Republican majority in

Orange County could be seen in an e-mail sent out Nov. 13 by Gerrie

Schipske.

Schipske was the Democratic challenger to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

“Believing that in every cloud there is a silver lining, Democrat

nominee for the 46th Congressional District, Gerrie Schipske, today

issued the following comments regarding the Nov. 5 election,” the

release began.

That silver lining? That Schipske received the highest percentage

of votes, 35%, against an incumbent Republican in L.A. or Orange

counties.

In the old GOP Orange County, that never would have happened.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at s.j.cahn@latimes.com.