The message that we at the FlashReport have for the small band of GOP legislators who think that it’s “cool” to go “rogue” on their party, and usurp the process of permitting the Republican Leaders in each chamber to be responsible for negotiating on a budget, is to just STOP.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Sacramento by a considerable margin.  If you look back at policy-making in the Capitol over a great many years, history is replete with GOP legislators who couldn’t play team ball.  It is these specific legislators who have done two things well, collectively, over time.  The first is to render moot the 2/3rds vote requirements on many issues that would allow the GOP to stop the big government agenda of the liberals who run the Capitol – in its tracks.   The second is to put a Republican patina (or worse) on all of the terrible things that have been done to this state by unholy alliance of the elitist left at the state’s public employee unions.

We all know that the allure of being the decision makers is great — and “negotiating a deal” would fill anyone with a sense of some sort of accomplishment — and create a temporary fiction that for a moment, that Republicans and not Democrats were the policy players in Sacramento.  But soon that will fade with the realization that the “deal” was bad policy and even worse politics.  I can tell you that any deal that involves putting the largest tax increase in state history onto a special election ballot is a bad idea.  It is nonsense to place such a measure before voters without acknowledging that there is some possibility that it will pass.  So there is a presumption that the “deal” struck supposes that something negotiated for is worth billions and billions of new income, sales and car taxes.   From a political perspective, 2012 is already going to be a challenging year for Republicans.  Between redistricting, the new Prop. 14 rules, and the disadvantage the GOP will have in terms of available campaign funds, the one thing we need more than anything is unity.

If Republicans can get through this critical period of time demonstrating that we, not the other party, are on their side on the important issue of holding the line against new taxes — maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to pick up seats in the legislature.  Unfortunately the pride of a small group of rogue Republicans may very well snatch political defeat out of the jaws of victory, and instead of a united GOP going into 2012, we would have a fractured party limping into the election year.  Republicans win never become a majority party in Sacramento unless we can be a team.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 9:27 am and is filed under Blog Posts.