McClintock

Congressman Tom McClintock remains the politician for whom I have contributed the most money ever. I am firmly convinced that had the "moderate" wing of the GOP -- the group many of you inaccurately label as RINOs but whom I call SKUNCs -- not stuck their noses into the grassroots recall of Gov. Davis, the last seven* years of California's history would have been much different because he'd have been governor instead of Schwarzenegger. We would have been enjoying one remarkable recovery instead of this disastrous decline. And it is destined to continue under Jerry Brown (who would never have been elected but for the disaster that was Arnold) who has a  legislature so corrupt and Marxist that even he has had to veto some of their excesses.

Mr. McClintock gave a speech recently, A Second Term for Obama Would Make the United States Go as California Has Gone, that I feel I must share highlights with my readers. He recaps recent California history. He interstices it with abject warnings that predict starkly what is in store for this Nation if conservatives allow the SKUNCs to stifle them and their candidates again. [emphasis added]

You are here in California to answer an important theoretical question and now you have your answer.

Yes, this is what Barack Obama’s second term would look like.

Study it. Fear it. And then go home and make sure that it never happens to the rest of the country.

...

Bad policies. Bad process. Bad politics. Those are the three acts in a Greek tragedy that tell the tale of how, in the span of a single generation, the most prosperous and golden state in the nation became an economic basket case.

...

The political Left [Incrementals] gradually gained dominance over California’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.

...

I submit to you that no conceivable act of God could wreak such devastation. Only acts of government can do that. And they have.

...

Our regulatory burdens are also years ahead of the rest of the nation – we’ve had our own version of Cap and Trade on the books for five years now, and even though the bulk of these restrictions yet to take effect, investors make decisions every day anticipating their impact.

This has already proven utterly devastating to energy generation, cargo and passenger transportation, cement production, construction, wine making, agriculture and manufacturing. When he signed this legislation, Gov. Schwarzenegger promised that this would produce a cornucopia of new green jobs.

...

But I need to remind you that the Obama administration is pursuing exactly the same policies nationally – and so far with the same results.

...

The Left loves to throw the term “dysfunctional” at our governing institutions. In the last week, the Democratic governor of North Carolina seriously opined that we ought to postpone congressional elections so that congressmen would “do the right thing.” Peter Orzag this week wrote of wanting to shift even more decision-making from our elected representatives to elitist boards appointed by our betters.

We have reached this point not because of a failure of our republican institutions, but because of a failure to respect those institutions.

...

The humility that kept Sacramento from sticking its nose into the business of local governments gave way to the hubris that the state knew better what was important to local communities than those communities themselves. The appalling breakdown of federalist principles at the national level now geometrically compounds this problem.

But at the core of this breakdown was the abandonment of our basic republican structure of government – and it began. right. here.

...

Dick Armey is right: “When we act like us we win, and when we act like them we lose.”


Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections not because voters abandoned Republican principles, but because they looked at the Republicans and concluded that the Republicans had abandoned Republican principles.

RTWT.

About the only thing I did not like was that he gave no credit to the TEA party movement for the huge electoral gains made by Republicans everywhere across this nation except California beginning last November. I think it is in great part because he's been a member of the GOP too long. However, his words and warnings for the rest of the country are well worth heeding.

The danger to our way of life comes because the control of the party ostensibly opposing Statism is still in the hands of SKUNCs. Each of us who do not approve of these bastards must make an effort to see that situation is changed or the whole of the West is most assuredly going to finally succumb to Kruschev's infamous boast: "We will bury you."

Cross-posted at Crusader Rabbit

--------------
*actually 8 years, because the national GOP, with its money controlled by Bush43's Karl Rove, first stuck their noses into Bill Simon Jr.'s gubernatorial run in 2002. That was after their SKUNC candidate, Richard Riordan, lost in the primary election due to the last great groundswell of California's conservatives. It's a whole sordid mess about which volumes could be written about how to destroy a viable candidate all while pretending to be on his side.