First Principles

Six years ago, the Democratic governor had overspent and over-borrowed and overextended entitlements in his State, and predictably, had broken the back of its finances.  In the resulting circus of a recall election (which I admit being very excited about) complete with porn stars and midgets, only one serious candidate emerged who proposed conservative solutions to the state’s problems of spending what they couldn’t afford and taxing its citizens and its businesses right out of the state.

Correctly, even the liberal voters of California recognized that the solution to more spending and over-taxation was not more spending and higher taxes, and so rejected the candidates who made that ridiculous claim.

They voted for Republican Arnold Schwartzenegger, whose rhetoric was boldly and unapologetically conservative.

And at first, he tried to bring fiscal discipline to the state.  He tried to clean up the mess, and when the state’s legislature rebuffed him, he tried to take it to the people.  His ballot initiatives were rejected by California’s voters, who could not resist their liberal tendencies for long.  The GOP Governor’s popularity was dropping.

And so he did what all kinds of people are urging the Republican party to do now – move left.  Accept that your constituents are lefties, and act accordingly.  He followed this advice from Colin Powell years before the former general ever gave it:

[Colin Powell] told a Washington audience last week that “the Republican Party is in deep trouble” and “getting smaller and smaller” because its views are not in sync with those of mainstream Americans. Republicans would do better without the “nastiness” of Rush Limbaugh or the “very polarizing” Sarah Palin, the speaker said, and they should realize that their philosophy of lower taxes and limited government has put them out of step with their fellow citizens.

“Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he told his audience. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

For the short term, the advice worked, and the Governator found himself reelected to a second term.  Along the way he embraced the radical (and expensive) environmentalism, anti-business practices of high taxes and heavy regulation, and the state’s already entrenched entitlement culture.  Hey – that’s where the mainstream thought of the state was, right?

Predictably, this approach worked out just as well as every other tax-too-much, borrow-on-top-of-that, and then-spend-all-that-and-more-every-year economic policy that has ever been implemented.  It failed miserably.

In a drastic attempt to try to get out of the hole dug by spending like a rock star with his first record deal on entitlements and then taxing people and business out of the state, he put forward a series of ballot initiatives to spend even more and tax even more than that.

Fortunately, the Californians regained their sanity once again, and told him, “no thanks.”  “Oh, HELL no!” might be more accurate.

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In moving left, Schwartzenegger put his state in a worse position even than when his predecessor was essentially fired by the people for gross mismanagement.  And the people are reacting as you’d expect – with a revolt.

And not only did those policies he once campaigned against further harm his state, but they hurt his party.  Despite the fact that the policies which led to this ruin were unarguably “progressive” ones, you can know just as surely as you can predict the sun will rise in the east tomorrow that the next Democrat to run for that office will run against the “failed Republican policies of George Bush and Arnold Schwartzenegger,” and evils of conservatism in general.  And they’ll have plenty of conservative sounding Arnold soundbites to “prove” their point in their TV ads.

So why in the hell would other Republicans want to emulate this Powell-esque approach?

Here in Nevada, things are pretty rough economically and budget-wise, and there are those who would blame our Republican governor who has taken (and stuck to) a hard line on refusing to increase taxes.  But all we need to do is look west to see how much worse the alternative would be.  As bad as we have it, we’re still attracting California’s businesses here!

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Right next to us, we have another perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday.  Not only do Republicans not win when they move left, but neither does any citizen of the state/city/nation over which they happen to govern.  The next time you see or hear a politicians or pundit advance this notion, invite them to go ask Governor Schwartzenegger how well that’s worked out for him.

Let’s hope the GOP establishment gets that before the whole nation suffers California’s fate.

Assuming it’s not already too late.