California GOP worries Donald Trump's trash talk could hurt its image

Trump - "P.T. Barnum of the modern age"

• Trump forcefully brings up vital issues that are ignored by the professional political class.  The problem is when you use insulting language your message is lost.  
• If it was ever serious at all, the Trump campaign was defeated on day one when he insulted the Mexican people.  The latest insult to POWs like John McCain is just proof of a total disregard for the feelings of other people. 

 (Los Angeles Times)  -  As he intended, Donald Trump has hit a nerve.

"We've got 15-16 very serious people running for president — and one clown," fumed Shawn Steel, California's representative to the Republican National Committee, the GOP's organizing body. "Trump is a pig, and he's coming in upsetting every cart he can find, throwing dishes off the table."

"Intolerable and inexcusable," declared the state Assembly Republican leader, Kristin Olsen of Modesto. "Somebody who has never been active in the party and is looking for his 15 minutes of fame."

The derision sounds personal because it is.

For years California Republicans have tried to change their party's image, to invite everyone into the pool — especially Latinos, whose enmity arose after a 1994 GOP effort to block immigrants without proper papers from state services. And now, the architecturally coiffed, anger-venting Trump has cannonballed in, disrupting the presidential race with factually incorrect and caustic criticisms of immigrants from Mexico.

Republican Assemblywoman Ling-Ling Chan
The party is "embracing the changing demography of the state—which is
why the Trump situation is just absolutely irritating," said Ling Ling Chang,
a GOP Assembly member from Diamond Bar who emigrated from Taiwan.
Also see: Asian Americans Give New Face to County GOP

Olsen and Assembly Republicans quickly denounced Trump's remarks. The party's leader in the state Senate, Bob Huff, criticized him too. Some leaders encouraged the state party to come down on Trump, but it has not.

The state Republican chief, former legislator Jim Brulte, who has worked to broaden the party's reach, has declined to critique any candidate and said voters would make their judgment in June's primary. The national party also declined to criticize Trump's immigration comments, though it released a statement Saturday upbraiding him for mocking Arizona Sen. John McCain's war record.

California, of course, provides a searing lesson in what happens to a political party confounded by issues resting on demographic changes. As the numbers of Latino and Asian voters have risen, the GOP's ability to win statewide races has vanished.

Still, the party is not what it was in 1994, when Proposition 187 succeeded at the polls — it was later largely tossed by the courts — only to define Republicans harshly.

Now, almost 30% of Assembly Republicans are women — a higher percentage than among Democrats. Five of the 28 caucus members are minorities. Seventeen are both white and male, a description that used to apply to the entire caucus.

The party is "embracing the changing demography of the state—which is why the Trump situation is just absolutely irritating," said Ling Ling Chang, a GOP Assembly member from Diamond Bar who emigrated from Taiwan.

"The California Republican Party is not the same as the national Republican Party," said freshman Assemblyman Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley, who blamed cable news for merging the two. "When you have that diversity and interacting with folks, it does begin to shape your mind in a different way. I think that's good."

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