DOWN BUT NOT OUT

You really have to marvel at the California GOP. They're just so damn entertaining.

I mean these are the same folks who actually defeated their best chance to elect a Republican Governor in 1996 order to nominate the one man in the state who COULDN'T defeat the then floundering Grey Davis.

Now they've come upon the brilliant idea of stealing a Republican victory in November 2008 by scrapping the "winner-take-all" distribution of California's 55 electoral votes and awarding an electoral vote per congressional district based on the popular vote in each district, in essence taking the "winner take all" formula of the electoral college and bringing it down to the congressional district level. In other words, if the GOP candidate wins in a congressional district he gets a California electoral vote and vice-versa if a Democrat wins in a district.

That would have the effect of awarding 20 electoral votes to the Republican -the same block of votes as winning a state like Ohio or Florida. That in turn would make it nearly impossible for a democrat to make up the difference and get to the magic number 270, meaning that regardless the national popular vote the republic party would win the White House.

This desperate attempt at a power grab was dead in the water after it was discovered that the sole fundraiser for the project was one of Rudy-boy's inner circle. But in a classic display of arrogance the initiative is up and running again chiefly due to an infusion of cash and support from Rep. Darrell Issa (R) (duh!), former loser gubernatorial candidate, millionaire, and GOP operative.

The new push is even using direct-mail with the words "your official CA state petition" on it, and sporting the "nonpartisan" (does anyone ever use that word and mean it anymore?) scowling picture of Hillary Clinton with the words "she hopes you won't open this letter!"

Make sure to drop-in to nodirtytricks.com and contribute what you can. This can't be allowed to go forward. As cliche as it sounds -our nation is at stake.