Lookslike actual bipartisanship can be a liability of epic proportions -- atleast, when you implicitly concede to the other party's agenda whilesimultaneously directly contradicting a strategy aimed at retrievingyour own party's political capital so that you can escape the albatrossof an unpopular public official.
Which is, you know, totally unprecedented.
But more importantly, being a genuinely bipartisan Republican is especially dangerous, and the Los Angeles Times has given us one more reason to believe that. The Times reportsthat the six Republican legislators infamously known as the "SacramentoSix" who crossed party lines and voted for the tax-raising,spending-cutting, lottery-borrowing budget are now facing "backlashfrom conservative activists and regular voters alike."
This is an apt reaction from those voters - especially theso-called "conservative activists." Bipartisanship has a bad name amongconservative luminaries,and rightfully so. Whenever the word is used as a rhetorical device byone political party, it is almost inevitably a tacit threat tosteamroller the other if they don't roll over and play dead.
Given therecent Democratic (and by extension, liberal) dominance, it's nosurprise that conservative activists are upset that their legislatorscaved to this rhetorical bludgeoning device. It also doesn't help thatthe national infrastructure of the conservative movement has beengleefully turning California into a test case for every single one ofits ideas about the problems of state interference, and so far thatstrategy has been all too accurate.
The cover of the March 9th issue ofNational Review features Schwarzenegger as a screaming baby with thecaption "Girly man Ruins State" (a diagnosis whose crudity is onlymatched by its accuracy), while supposed unofficial leader of theRepublican Party, Rush Limbaugh, has been cheering California'sRepublicans for not giving in on the budget.
Now, there is no doubt that California's conservatives have a listof grievances with California's government which, if it were ever put onpaper, would probably be long enough to mummify the planet Earth.California and, more importantly Governor Schwarzenegger, have been apopular target for conservative pundits ever since the former becamedefined by its association with San Francisco and since the latter sold outto the Left.
Moreover, the conservative movement has a firmer grip onCalifornia politics than most of California's bluer citizens would liketo admit. After all, President Ronald Reagan was governor of Californiain a previous life, and to some extent, his influence has lingered on.
But all that said, it is worth asking whether conservativeactivists have picked the right target at the moment, where theirpolitical capital is concerned. In the short term, the answer isobviously yes. After all, California's citizens are mostly hopping madat the budget, and most, if not all of them can find something toobject to in the Leviathan bill.
By recalling the Republicanlegislators responsible for this debacle, California's conservativeswould send a clear message that deviance from the ideological line willnot be tolerated because it is definitionally wrong. This would also begood practice for conservative activists in dealing with other appeasing legislatorswho are often liabilities to the movement's cause. It could also allowthe movement to effectively discard any baggage left over from thebudget once the storm hits, rather the same way it is currentlyembroiled in discarding the detritus from Bush.
All of these would be persuasive arguments, if the movement couldcount on a fair hearing in California. But as is painfully obviousgiven the state's blue leaning, that is most often not the case. Thebudget is not out of the woods yet, since Schwarzenegger apparentlystill wants to waste the state's money on more special elections, andso if it goes down in flames along with the legislators who supportedit, that opens the way for Democratic operatives to attack theconservative movement (as they have been for a while) as the party of"no."
Given their voting patterns, California's people will beall-too-ready to listen to anything, anything but blame fortheir profligacy, and will be all-too-happy to tar those goshdarntax-cutting heartless people who hate the poor, rather than take a hardlook at their own fiscally irresponsible impulses.
True, most of California doesn't listen to Rush, but with the right strategy, one hopes they will listen to reason.