A conservative pundit weighs in on the California
Recall election, majority rule, and how this will affect BC 04 (Bush-Cheney 04).
- KWC A Conservative Travesty
By George F. Will, Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A37 California's recall --
a riot of millionaires masquerading as a "revolt of the people" --
began with a rich conservative Republican congressman, who could think of no
other way he might become governor, financing the gathering of the necessary
signatures. Now this exercise in "direct democracy" -- precisely what America's
Founders devised institutions to prevent -- has ended with voters full of self-pity and indignation
removing an obviously incompetent governor. They have removed him from the
office to which they reelected
him after he had made his
incompetence obvious by making most of the decisions that brought the voters to
a boil. The odor of what some
so-called conservatives were indispensable to producing will eventually arouse
them from their swoons over Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they can inventory the
damage they have done by seizing an office that just 11 months ago they proved
incapable of winning in a proper election under ideal conditions. These Schwarzenegger
conservatives -- now, there is an
oxymoron for these times -- have embraced a man who is, politically,
Hollywood's culture leavened by a few paragraphs of Milton Friedman. They have
given spurious plausibility to a meretricious accusation that Democrats are
using to poison American politics, the charge that Florida 2000 was part of a
pattern of Republican power grabs outside the regular election process. Schwarzenegger's
conservative supporters have furled the flag of "family values" while
mocking their participation in the anti-Clinton sex posse. They were unoffended
by Schwarzenegger's flippant assertions that only the "religiously
fanatic" oppose human cloning -- not just stem cell research but cloning.
These faux
conservatives'
new hero said that only "right-wing crazies" supported the proposal
on Tuesday's ballot to bar the state from collecting the racial data that fuel
the racial spoils system. Some conservatives
insist that they have been not empty-headed but hardheaded: They say a
Republican governor will markedly strengthen the Bush campaign in California.
Perhaps. But Republican governors did not prevent Bush from losing Wisconsin,
Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2000. During the coming
presidential campaign, California's Republican governor will be busy proving
the fatuity of his proposal to solve California's budget crisis by cutting
waste, fraud and abuse -- things for which there is no constituency. In 2004 President Bush will not campaign
in a California seething with resentment of spending cuts and attempted tax
increases advocated by a hugely unpopular Democratic governor. Instead, Bush
will campaign in a California in which the Republican governor will be
illustrating the axiom that today only a Republican governor can substantially
raise taxes. This is so because the
people, in their zeal for majority rule, have mandated, through the initiative
process, a two-thirds supermajority requirement for raising taxes. Which means
the Republicans' legislative minority is large enough to block a Democratic
governor's request for tax increases but probably is not starchy enough to
resist a Republican governor's request for -- Republicans believe in recycling,
at least of squeamish rhetoric -- "revenue enhancements." Then again, some
Republicans might resist, because their principles need not threaten what is
really important -- reelection. Almost all legislators of both parties
represent safe seats because
the political class has put an end to much of California's politics by using
redistricting to protect all incumbents. This is one reason why politics has reemerged through the recall process, which allows the people to vent against
their chosen representatives. The put-upon people of
California, groaning under the weight of decisions taken by California's
electorate, have repeatedly taken lawmaking into their own hands through
initiatives that mandate this and that allocation of resources. So an estimated
-- no one seems able to say for sure, which says much about the consequences of
California populism -- 60 percent to 80 percent of the budget is beyond the
control of the governor and Legislature. One of the new
governor's two noteworthy campaign promises is that he will not cut education,
which -- thanks to what the public did in a 1988 initiative -- is roughly 50
percent of state spending. His other venture into specificity during the
campaign -- a campaign in which he said, brassily and correctly, that "the public doesn't care about
figures"
-- was his promise to promptly increase
by 50 percent a deficit already at $8 billion by repealing the car tax that
Davis and the legislature recently tripled. A Washington-based
Democrat who was making election eve get-out-the-vote calls to African American
households in South Los Angeles knew Gray Davis would be recalled when voter
after voter told her, emphatically and specifically, the precise dollar amount
that the tax increase was costing him or her. The new governor should repeal it
because it is unjust. And because the people deserve to get what they demand.
Don't they? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |
- Re: [Futurework] Forget the sweet talk Karen Watters Cole
- Re: [Futurework] Forget the sweet talk Robert E. Bowd