Death of the California Republican Party: Murder or Suicide?
The California Republican Party is dead. Call the undertaker, haul away the corpse.
But was it murder, or was it suicide? Mostly a combination, a result both of demographic changes and the stupidity of Republican leaders.
The modern GOP began with the election of Ronald Reagan as governor in1966. He built a coalition of fiscally conservative suburban voters and “Reagan Democrats,” alienated from their historic party. Republicans carried California for six straight presidential elections using that formula (1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988)
But with the end of the Cold War, defense related jobs disappeared, and were replaced by the high technology information age. The new high tech voters were turned off by a less tolerant GOP conservatism, and over the past 20 years Republicans have suffered a long decline in the suburbs. The 2008 election marked the end of the GOP with most high wealth suburban voters.
The capitol should be teeming with economists
Is any Californian alarmed that snap judgments without the benefit of professional economic analysis are being made to negotiate the state’s budget and economic recovery?
Economic impacts must always take precedent in a state that leads the nation in bold government programs. The unintended consequences of previous policies and budget solutions have exacerbated the current emergency and still we see almost no economists in the Capitol laying out the long and short term effects for the myriad policy debates that make up our budget negotiations.
Today, CMTA and 25 other employer groups sent a joint letter to the Legislature insisting that economic stimulus must be the third leg of budget negotiations.
A Tax Web Revealed by GOP Budget Plan
Not even Republicans in the legislature believe the budget proposal they laid out for inspection yesterday will be implemented. Still, the plan has merit in showing where government has grown and combating the idea that automatic budget growth should be expected in these difficult times. In fact, freezing budget outlays to current levels make sense in a fiscal crisis.
What attracted my attention in the proposal was the revenue side, particularly the suggestion to move $6 billion out of quarantined funds for mental health programs and early childhood development. These funds came about because voters passed two ballot measures. Proposition 10 in 1998 raised cigarette taxes for the childhood programs. Proposition 63 in 2004 added a surcharge on high-end income taxpayers to pay for mental health programs.
I worked on the campaigns to defeat both measures, obviously unsuccessfully. To re-direct these funds to general fund purposes will require a vote of the people since it was a vote of the people that established these taxes and their special purposes in the first place.