THE RON REPORT — PRE-ELECTION EDITION.

I know what you’re asking. What do they mean pre-election edition? The election was just held. True. But the real election doesn’t happen until February 2009 when Chairman Ron Nehring runs for re-election as Party Chairman. That election for President we just had was just the “warm-up” act for the main event.

And to start, Chairman Ron welcomes his Board of Directors to the newly minted Democrat county of San Diego on Friday for a Board meeting where he will attempt to explain the following:

A) How John McCain lost California by the largest percentage of an Republican presidential candidate in over four decades
B) How under his watch Republicans have lost five counties in voter registration to the Democrats, including the important counties of San Diego, Ventura and San Bernardino
C) How Chairman Ron presided over the defeat of two open Republican Assembly seats both in southern California, one of which in San Diego
D) Why Chairman Ron sat in his car playing with his Blackberry instead of knocking on doors with one of the loosing Republican Assembly candidates

Two years ago the Grassroots Champion promised us that we would have an organization worthy of our ideas. So what failed, our organization, our ideas, or our Chairman?

From the campaign trail…the Ron Report heard over and over from candidates and their staff that the Chairman didn’t want to go out precinct walking with the candidates, and when he did make the trip he wouldn’t even get out of the car. One such campaign official in Riverside noted… I couldn’t believe what I saw. Nehring came to knock on doors, but all he did was sit in his car and play with his blackberry. Maybe Ron was too busy or too shy to actually meet voters. Talking to real people can be scary.

Candidates are also complaining that Nehring refused to make a single donor call to help our targeted districts. As legislators and board members were out making phone calls, raising money, and trying to salvage some of these races, Nehring was jet-setting around the world teaching people what he refused to do…build an organization by rolling up your sleeves and working….living up to the true adage, “Do as I say, not as I do” or the other appropriate adage “You got a problem? I got a flight to Dubai. Goodbye.”

But back here at home, our Republican Women’s Federated organization continues to do the heavy lifting in voter registration. According to one of our Women’s Federated - the San Diego Party only registered 1200 Republicans in the past year. That’s what happens when your San Diego County Chairman is being the bell boy for the Robin Leach of State Party Chairmen.

All that foreign travel has paid dividends.

Under Ron’s leadership the State Party had to deal with an immigration scandal that made us the laughing stock in the nation, and the butt of jokes on late night TV shows. Somehow Chairman Nehring never understood that hiring an illegal alien who sued the federal government, and hiring a Canadian citizen to be the Party’s political director, would cause a problem. It’s no wonder the Party sunk into debt, and no wonder that Chairman Nehring refused to ever pick up the phone and make one phone call to ask a donor for money – even though he teaches fundraising at the Leadership Institute.

The only person who should be more upset than Republican activists and donors is our good friend Sam Hardage from San Diego. Sam is Ron’s mentor and “benefactor.” We hear Sam pays Ron $160,000 a year to build a grassroots conservative movement in California. Sam should fire Ron and demand his money back for lack of productivity.

And so should we.

Instead, I argue that instead of looking backward, the GOP should go ballistic. It should make good on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s promise to “blow up the box!” and go big or stay home.

To have a fighting chance to actually mean something to the American electorate in the coming years, Republicans should rebuild themselves as a true National party that applies Conservative principles to the most critical problem facing the nation today: i.e., problem of national governance. The GOP, more so than a hidebound Democratic party has the opportunity to remake itself as a true party of National Reform that can break with the dilemmas of the past to offer true, just-in-time leadership for our nation in the 21st Century.

The election of Obama as a harbinger of Roosevelt’s New Deal 2.0 is no accident. It is an open secret that the American civil religion in the 20th Century has vacillated between the followers of Roosevelt and Reagan. Big government used to respond to economic crisis and wars (Roosevelt); Federal government used to define and uphold new rights (Johnson); followed by reactionary cutting of wasteful Federal expenditures, reaffirmation of governance by the States, and invoking the physiocrat ideal of laissez faire (Reagan).

But bouncing between these two dialectical poles of Classical Liberalism over the past 75 years has ignored the development of a true national polity. Like it or not, our nation is no longer primarily a federally protected collection of state polities. This is a new historical fact. More obvious, the U.S. has, like it or not, become an increasingly interdependent part of a shrinking world, no longer able to set its own course on its own terms.

Republicans must be the first to recognize that the approaches to governance taken by Roosevelt and Johnson and by Reagan and Bush no longer deal with reality. As a nationally integrated political community, the U.S. requires coherent and accountable national governance. And, as an interdependent player in a shrinking world, the U.S. requires a foreign policy very different from that appropriate during World War II and the Cold War.

Internally, there is an immense problem that our anachronistic left-right, liberal-conservative political sloganeering and policy formation overlooks to our detriment. Only the President is nationally elected and accountable to all the people. Meanwhile, each member of the House and Senate owes allegiance to local constituents, not to the national public. And because of this system, local and national interest groups have far greater influence in Congress than do the American people. Moreover, America’s economy is now tied into international markets in ways that leave a weak government in Washington even weaker. So the American people are underserved both domestically and internationally by an out-of-date, ineffective system of government that frustrates the will of the people in favor of special interests and foreign powers.

Consider for a moment the actions of the Federal government in the current domestic and international financial crisis that strives to save a National banking system and National economy with unprecedented government take-over schemes driven by Congressional brokering of competing regional interests, business and national interest groups.

In short, nationwide governance has been forced upon our leadership even though they wish the markets ought to care of themselves. Consequently, the outcome we are witnessing is Bush—and soon Obama’s— hit-and-miss approach of piecemeal pragmatism that changes day by day.

Look at our other hot button issues: health-care, energy, transportation, the environment; not to mention our crumbling infrastructure and Social Security crisis; abortion, failing schools, and “same-sex” marriage. These are precisely the kinds of issues that illustrate the problem of inadequate national governance. Within the framework of the Constitution, all of these issues belong to the governing authority of the 50 states. Marriage law, education and welfare policies, for example, are not original responsibilities of the federal government. Yet, they have all become national issues, and disputes over them frequently go to the US Supreme Court, which should not resolve these kinds of national policy questions. National issues of this kind can no longer be handled simply by saying, “Let the states decide.”

Simply put, given the issues that face our country today, no amount of ideological purity from the Left or the Right can change the fact that our current Federal government is not designed to be a nationally accountable legislative body.

Republicans, therefore, have the unique opportunity to develop a new generation of scholarship, policy, and leadership that can begin to address anew the relationship of state governments to a national government that requires revision and a stronger, more direct accountability of Congress and the presidency to the national citizenry.

In so doing, Republicans should also champion true reform of our antiquated electoral systems that no amount of ID checks, voting machine certifications, resdistricting commissions, term limits, or campaign finance regulation can address. By advocating true electoral reform that implements judicious forms of preference voting, whether in single- or multi-member districts, the GOP can once again be the party of reform that insures a vote for every citizen, and makes the votes of ordinary citizens matter.

By championing these reforms, the core Republican principles of limited government under law as a servant of civil society, will follow more easily and offer more context and meaning in the coming battles for basic civil rights and religious freedoms involving school choice, as well as the rights of workers, minorities, and families of all kinds. By becoming over time a true National Party of reform, Republicans can again aspire to lead this country and win the praise, hopes, and following of a new majority of American citizens.

The June 17th speakers are Assemblywoman Audra Strickland and Tony Strickland, a candidate for the California State Assembly. July 15 will feature political pundits including: Dan Schnur, Steve Frank, and Jon Fleischman. Admission is $25 per event or $125 for the entire series that runs through July.

Cost is $20 and includes dinner and program. For reservations call Margie Kauble at 510-758-2637, or Denise Gianni, at 510-222-3789, or send questions or RSVP by e-mail.

The April 22th speaker is author/columnist Dan Weintraub, of the Sacramento Bee. May 12 will feature a special panel discussion on the War on Terrorism and Islamo-Facism.

Admission is $25 per event or $125 for the entire series that runs through July.

This is disappointing news since all that rank-and-file Republicans have heard was how wonderful a fundraiser His Majesty is. Why, even the California Republican Party has asked the Brilliant Shining Leader, to head a key fundraising effort for the State Party! But according to PUBLIC RECORDS AVAILABLE ONLINE, Federal and State financial reports beg the question:

WHERE’S THE BEEF?

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So this is why the Del Beccaristas don’t want anyone to be so bold as to look behind the curtain. Because, there’s nothing there! By comparison, in January 2007, there was over $21,000 and steady income to start out the year.

Now there’s only a chalk outline on the sidewalk. And these are the people telling Republicans the CCRP’s Central Committee doesn’t need better financial management or oversight.

Fundraising Wizardry, indeed—Poof!—it’s gone.

Good luck to the California Republican Party once it discovers Il Duce has no clothes.

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Full Disclosure: Bill Gram-Reefer, publisher of this blog, is a candidate for the Republican Central Committee representing District 4 (Concord, Pleasant Hill, Clayton, Pacheco, and a teensy-tiny gerrymandered strip of Walnut Creek).

In connection with those added duties, the State Vice Chair will be relinquishing his role as the Contra Costa County Chairman effective in April of 2008. The Contra Costa Party will hold elections for their new Chairman at that time.