Republicans need to unite, not fight

The big vote was over the reauthorization of a reformed version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — aka, FISA.

FISA is the controversial act that permits U.S. spy agencies to gather foreign intelligence by collecting the communications of non-Americans located outside the country.

It’s considered by government officials to be a crucial tool for disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

But, as we know, FISA was abused by Democrats, the FBI and the CIA to spy on members of the Trump campaign, subvert his presidency and violate the civil rights of American citizens.

House Speaker Johnson pushed for passage of the reformed FISA bill.

But Donald Trump said it deserved to be killed, and about 20 conservative Republican members who thought FISA’s powers should be weakened more severely joined with Democrats to block it.

Everyone agrees FISA is an important tool against terrorism and we will probably still get a compromise version of it by April 19.

But it’s up to the Republicans in the House to fix FISA so it can never again be used against our own people.

Ordinarily, that should not be too hard to do when you control the House, even by a few votes. But Republicans in Washington can’t even control their own members or unite behind their own leaders.

They just recently dumped Speaker Kevin McCarthy and replaced him with Speaker Mike Johnson.

Now Marjorie Taylor Greene is causing trouble again and talking about ousting Johnson as Speaker because he worked with Democrats to pass big spending bills.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party of California is doing the same stupid, suicidal things on a state level.

The state’s Republican Party barely exists today and its future looks worse.

The main problem is an electorate that keeps reelecting the same Democrat yahoos whose “progressive” ideas about criminal justice and $20 minimum wage laws have turned the state’s cities into dirty, dangerous homeless encampments.

Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats in California by almost 2 to 1 — 47% to 24%, with independents at 23%. So until we somehow double the number of our voters, the only way we Republicans can win a statewide election is if we cheat.

Yet there is a small group within the state Republican Party that is trying to get rid of Republicans they don’t like.

The group recently invited me to speak at this year’s state convention. They said they wanted to expand their numbers so there would be more of them and less room in the party for Republicans they didn’t like — the moderate Kevin McCarthy kind.

When I said I wouldn’t help them with that idea, they said, “But isn’t that what you want?”

“No,” I said.

“You are the minority party and you think the way to win is to kick more people out and make it even smaller than it is today?”

I said to someone in the group, “I bet you’re going to tell me you learned from Ronald Reagan.”

“Yes,” he said.”

“No you didn’t,” I said.

I told him my father didn’t spend his time trying to get rid of people in the Republican Party. He embraced members. He might campaign against you in a primary, but he would never kick you out of the party.

Republicans at the state and national level are spending more time trying to get rid of their own people instead of embracing each other and uniting for victory.

We have an awful president and a lunatic Democrat Party that are handing Republicans a dozen juicy issues we can run on.

But if the Republican Party wants to win this fall, it has to get its own act together before it’s too late.