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Notes -
Are California republicans conservative at the level of >40 years ago though? Because you’re not voting for some southern evangelical when you’re voting for an R in a deep blue state. If people are too dumb to parse this then they deserve their one party dystopia
Yes, most people, even in groups that skew above average in IQ, have trouble parsing that their out group is not monolithic. For hacker news this makes it tough for them to accept that the California republican on their ballot is not Ken Paxton. Actually, it’s far from clear that all of them live in California- given how big the tech industry is in Austin, many of them may literally have the choice between woke lunatic and fire breathing social conservative(who probably is not evangelical, but is definitely a southern religious conservative).
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This has actually been a problem for the California GOP (and to a lesser extent, Democratic parties in places like say, Wyoming). The only people left to vote for the out-party are the radicals, which give the radicals more power, which turns off the median voter in the state, and thus, the power becomes even less popular.
Somebody could've beat Newsom in the recall, but they would've had to actually meet the median Californian voter where they were - instead, Republican voters got behind Larry Elder, who has a multi-decade career as a right-wing entertainer.
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