The Day of Reckoning

There has been no posting since we exercized our franchise last Tuesday. This will allay your worries: I haven't actually thrown myself off a tall building after the Republican debacle. As some of you already know, I am a Republican only by default. Alas, on the whole it is the only practical choice. Here in the California Republic, as it's called on our state flag, the Republican party is the only available political vehicle with a ghost of a chance of electing someone to office with something resembling a moral compass. And it is, indeed, just a ghost of a chance. (This is not the California of my youth in which UROC and the CRA were kingmakers.) But to get that chance, the said candidate has to be nominated in the primary. And to vote in that primary, one has to be a member of the party whose primary it is. “Independents” can vote in no primary. Only registered AIP folks can vote in the AIP primary, only Libertarians in the Libertarian, and, yes, only registered Republicans in the Republican primary. So one stays by default in the GOP even though it is once more in the hands of the country club oligarchs.

And every once in a while someone slips through whom you can vote for with enthusiasm. Vide Tom McClintock and Dick Mountjoy. True, they don't actually get elected these days. Instead we get Arnold pro-lifers-are-just-a-bunch-of-religious-fanatics Schwarzenegger. But it's the closest thing there is to a chance at a government that isn't “awa w' the fairies.” (I meant that in the traditional sense when I wrote it; looking at it in print it seems to work in the modern sense, too, Mr Foley (R. Fla.) to the contrary notwithstanding.)

For the local offices there was never any chance. This area was gerrymandered as safe for Democrats many years ago. Congress: D-66%, R-34%; state assembly: D-68.3%, R-31.7%. The local offices are unfortunately where most of the first rate people are. Margherita Underhill is an excellent example. A first class candidate for almost any office. But a sacrificial lamb in this party of the county. It's astonishing that anyone bothers to spend a filing fee to appear on the GOP line out here.

The voting on the ballot propositions is alternately depressing and bizarre. My fellow citizens have slipped the surly bonds of reality and touched the face of chaos. They want to spend money. Lots of money. They have approved bond issues for water projects, baby sitting services – uh, I mean public schools, flood control, highways, disasters, housing/shelters, transportation . . . I'm sure I've left something out. They appear to believe that bonds are all free money and never have to be repaid because all tax increases were defeated. We also decided that we would like to have our homes taken by the state for private use with little or no compensation. And then we demanded that all convicted sex offenders be required to live far, far away. . .apparently under the assumption that no sex offender will ever own a car or have bus fare. Pity those with chidren who live in rural areas; their area is the new home of the newly released sex offender.

And here in Lakewood, the Athens of the southeast county, we have decided that since the local do-gooders make vast amounts of cash selling explosive and incendiary devices in our town, they should be allowed to continue to do so. And the local citizenry can continue to set them off every 4th of July. And everyone for miles around can load up the car with their own explosives and set off down the 605 to celebrate the holiday here in the gunpowder capital of southern California. After all, we've only lost one house altogether. Those others were only damaged.

And yet with all that I am remarkably cheerful.

There is no gainsaying that the Democrats did not deserve to win. But there is some weight on the other side of the balance: the unarguable fact that the Republicans thoroughly deserved to lose.

This has been a disgraceful administration from its limitations on personal freedom at home to its imperial adventures abroad. I don't forget the pro-life cause either. So far as I can tell, the Republican party apparat taken as a whole has no commitment whatsoever to pro-life success. They are exactly as pro-life as they need to be in order to keep their pro-life constituency in line but no more. In the thirty four years since Roe v Wade there has been no attempt from the Washington GOP power structure at a pro-life constitutional amendment. Not one. Not even in the early days when there was such a thing as a pro-life Democratic congressman. In my opinion they have done their best to ensure that substantial pro-life measures never succeed. So long as the issue remains a viable one, they have a lock on that constituency. Were it ever to go away, a great many members of that huge block of voters would be gone forever. Some back to inactivity, some back to their homes in the Democratic party. But none to remain and vote for the country club oligarchy.