Monday, November 12, 2012

Years of obstructionism has destroyed the GOP in California

A common state politics nerd tattoo
There's been a lot of Republican soul-searching since the election, mostly focusing on how the party needs to rethink its xenophobic approach to Hispanics. No where is this more true than in California, where Hispanics comprise around 38% of the population, which is about parity with whites. Romney lost here in a landslide, and at the state level Republicans fared no better.

Columnist George Skelton in the LAT ticks off a list of Republican defeats:


Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein drew only token Republican opposition and won by 23 points. 
Democrats, at last count, were gaining four congressional seats in California.
The stunner was the state Assembly, where Democrats apparently achieved a historic supermajority to match the party's similar feat in the Senate.

I think what you're seeing here--total Republican irrelevance in California--is the inevitable result of what has been poisoning California politics for decades, namely the conversion of the legislature to a supermajoritarian body on any law involving budgets and revenue. By requiring a 2/3 majority in the legislature in order to raise taxes, the state constitution has effectively granted the minority party the power to control the political agenda via obstruction. This has led to gridlock and insolvency over the years, and to what almost everyone agrees is a dysfunctional state government unable to make hard budgetary choices.
But it has also atrophied the Republican party, rewarding anti-tax extremists with real power and removing any incentive for striking deals and compromises. Ideologues thrive in this environment as they are able to portray themselves as heroic last lines of defense--and show results--but moderates are gradually purged from the party, their ability to make deals useless so long as the party is successful with obstructionism. Over the years the Calfornia GOP has evolved into an institution optimized for obstruction, very good at ideological purity and solidarity but completely clueless when it comes to bipartisan compromise and the art of cobbling together an ideological diverse constituency to support it.
Now--due to a combination of growing alarm at dysfunctional state government, rejiggering of district boundaries, and the continued demographic shift away from "establishment whites", Republicans find themselves completely ousted and on the wrong end of a Democractic supermajority that they can no longer obstruct, and that no longer needs to seek their bi-partisan acquiescence.
In a way this will be healthy for the Republicans, as now they will once again have the political incentive to make bargains and extract concessions from inevitable Democratic legislation. I predict a move towards more moderation and deal-making in the state legislature in the coming years--and far more functional government than we've seen over the last few decades.
I hope that in addition to solving California's eternal budget problems, both sides come to see the harm of supermajoritarian requirements in the legislature and return to the days where a budget--or a tax increase--can be passed with a simple majority, subject to the subsequent approval of the citizens come election time. That's how it's supposed to work.

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