If you haven’t done so already, be sure to join my new FaceBook group, "Never Elect Abel Maldonado To Anything, Ever Again," which launched late yesterday morning. We have more than 300 members and counting.

One byproduct is a message I received from Chris Tolles, the CEO of Topix, LLC. You can read it here.

Chris identifies himself as a Republican, but blasts those of us who oppose the massive tax hike as "obstructionists" who need to follow Arnold Schwarzenegger’s example if there”s to be any hope of growing the California Republican Party.

And in a startling example of cognitive dissonance, Tolles also exclaims — while praising the virtues of Arnold’s leadership — that we need to end public employee unioon control of state government.

Tolles is correct about the unions, of course, but how that meshes with devotion to Arnold doesn’t compute. Arnold apologized for his attempt to tame union power in 2005, and the unions have actually responded Meg Whitman’s criticisms of them by admonishing her to emulate Arnold and raise the white flag.

We have problems in California Republicanism, but it doesn’t lie with conservatives who want to "obstruct" higher taxes. It’s with thinking like Mr. Tolles that’s predicated on the assumption California is entirely populated by hip, wealthy tech entrepreneurs who can afford higher taxes, are totally indifferent to or are hostile to religion, and think government can heap regulation after regulation on the economy with no economic cost.

Some day, maybe it will occur to the so-called "pragmatists" in the GOP: when the Democrats start hunting for Republican votes to raise taxes, with which GOP legislators do they start and finish?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.