Now that theRepublican Party in California has officially passed the budget hurdle,the civil war which has plagued the Right since November appears tohave come to California. And interestingly, the battle is not betweenmoderates and hard-liners, but rather between different varieties ofhard-liners who have different tactics for achieving the hard-line.
Onecasualty of such purging is former Senate Minority Leader Dave Codgill,about whom the Los Angeles Times recently did a profile.In it, Codgill lays out the arguments for a pragmatic approach inconservative politics, which set him firmly at odds with the currentSenate Minority Leader, Dennis Hollingsworth.
Negotiating this ideological impasse becomes easier to the extentthat this is a personal fight between Hollingsworth and Codgill, butunfortunately, that is not the case. The truth is that Codgill andHollingsworth's identities are almost irrelevant where this battle isconcerned, as it has been fought out many, many timesby Republicans and will likely continue to be negotiated at the pointof a metaphysical gun. Still, it is worth using their statements asvalid samples of the different approaches, if only to analyze the pathwhich California's GOP feels compelled to tread, and see if it ends upleading somewhere worthwhile.
The current battle between these two figures revolves around thecontroversial soon-to-be ballot measure Proposition 1A, a measure whichimposes voluntary spending limits on California's government whilesimultaneously extending tax increases by two years. On one side isDave Codgill, the Los Angeles Times's ultimate "pragmaticconservative" (which to conservatives generally is no endorsement worthhaving). And Codgill's argument is simple - spending limits are anamazing political coup, especially in California, so a few years oftemporary taxes are worth it. Proposition 1A is "a price worth payingin order to get permanent spending reform," as Codgill told the Times.
Supporting Codgill is Mr. Democrats-Only Primary, also known as Abel Maldonado, who told the Timesthat the battle essentially came down to a question of whether to letthe state go belly-up. Maldonado claims that some Republicanlegislators believe that "We need to prove a point that the majorityparty got us into this mess." Maldonado asks the obvious rhetoricalquestion, "Then what?", in response. And while it's difficult to admitthat moderates like Maldonado have a point, the question of anonfunctional State casts more of a shadow over this debate than somewould like to admit.
So that's the pragmatic side. What about the ideological one? Inthis court comes Hollingsworth, who says the GOP should not supportProposition 1A, seeing as it will be opposed both by the Left and bythe Right simultaneously for wildly different reasons. Hollingsworth'sargument, as related by the Alameda Times-Star, boils down to the claim that "People will look atwhether they want more taxes in exchange for a spending cap. It's hardto connect how a spending cap really affects your daily life, but a taxincrease is very real to people."In other words, while the GOP might get a spending cap in place, they'dbe out of power for so long as a result of the unpopular taxes thatthere'd be no way to prevent the Democrats from perverting theirachievements. The battle-lines, therefore, are drawn on the basis ofone question: Will the GOP preserve more short-term political efficacyin conditions of budget insolvency or in conditions of high taxation?And intertwined with this question is the question of whether the GOPcan be blamed for a budget solution in which they ostensibly had nohand.
The solution to both these questions is unclear, but it depends agreat deal on whether the GOP can successfully detach itself from the5,000 lb gorilla that is Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial record. Schwarzenegger is not running for anything,so the GOP has a fighting chance at doing this, but if it can do so,then the answer to the above conundrum clearly is to followHollingsworth, since his remedy preserves the GOP from blame,effectively allowing them to pick up the pieces after the Democraticmode of governance implodes upon itself.
Assuming, of course, that California survives the blast.