California Republican Assembly
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The California Republican Assembly is a conservative California Republican activist group. It is the oldest and largest grassroots volunteer organization chartered by the California Republican Party.
The CRA can date its origin to the 1930s and was an early supporter of Governor Earl Warren but also an early opponent of Chief Justice Earl Warren, whom it believed had moved left from his gubernatorial days to his time on the court and so was regarded as far too liberal to merit support by conservatives. The CRA was largely supportive of the efforts of Barry Goldwater's Presidential bid and helped him finalize his nomination at the 1964 Republican National Convention held in San Francisco. Later that year it helped the cause of George Murphy, a former movie actor and close friend of Ronald Reagan in being elected to the United States Senate, and then helped Reagan himself to be elected Governor of California in 1966.
The group claims to hold much of the responsibility for the "Reagan Revolution". Ronald Reagan often referred to CRA as the "Conscience of the Republican Party." Unlike some other conservative political groups, it makes no pretense at being nonpartisan; it is forbidden by its charter from supporting any candidates who are not Republicans. Its only goal is to influence the Republican Party to remain very conservative. It is pro-life and pro-"family values" and it supports a limited-government agenda calling for lower taxes, less governmental regulation, and more personal freedom. In the 1990s it spawned a national organization based on its own efforts, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, which now has affiliates in approximately forty states.
Members of the group now dominate the statewide California Republican Party and many of its affiliated county organizations. Critics of the group, including those within Republican circles, note that since the group became truly dominant within the party that Republicans had won no statewide offices within California until Arnold Schwarzenegger won the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election and that he did so without CRA support, as it had supported third-place finisher Tom McClintock instead. They feel that its agenda is now too conservative ever to be accepted on a statewide basis within California and that unless its members relinquish their positions of party leadership that Republicans in California will constitute essentially a permanent minority.[citation needed] CRA members counter that without its influence, the California Republican Party would resemble the California Democratic Party so closely that voters, especially conservative ones, would essentially be left with little or no real choice.
