Extremists Help GOP Muscle In On The Golden State

[G_j]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0333/perlstein.php

When conventional Democrats get together to strategize, the conclusion is ever thus: The center must lead. By this thinking, gauging what the greatest number of Americans already believe, then convincing them that you've always thought exactly the same thing, is the only way to win. Just look at Clinton.

Republicans, led by their conservative wing, do things differently. They honor the example of history—which reliably demonstrates that lasting political success only rarely originates in the center. It more often occurs when ideas once considered extreme get successfully marketed as safely centrist ones. They deem risky notions worth the chance, because such ideas can secure the biggest victory of all: changing the terms of the political debate. Then conservatives can control the playing field, with all the attendant home-field advantages.

That's the lesson of Arnold Schwarzenegger's entrance into the special election for California governor on October 7.

The movement to yank incumbent Gray Davis, and to choose a successor if he's recalled, was born and bred on California's right-wing fringe. Its roots go back all the way to the 1960s, when anti-tax activists began their mad, Ahab-like quest to mobilize the state's instruments of "direct democracy" and make it all but impossible for politicians to carry out the kind of collective, deliberative decision making about sharing society's burdens that makes actual democracy healthy. They first succeeded in 1978, when conservatives got enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to decimate property taxes. Proposition 13 passed, and municipalities suddenly found themselves with a quarter less money to run their schools, fire trucks, sewers, and parks.

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[deandem215]

1. Hmmmmm

They're probably behind this jackass site... http://www.nodavisrecall.com

[EastofEdon]

2. not sure

what you mean, but I found the article informative,

<snip>
Prop 13 was authored by Paul Gann, who went on to form a "grassroots" organization, People's Advocate, that made a specialty of exploiting California's initiative process for conservative ends. The man who runs PA now, Ted Costa, is the author of the Gray Davis recall.
When Costa announced the attempt, less than 100 days after Davis won re-election by a significant margin, the experts greeted the idea the same way they had Proposition 13 in 1978—it was crazy.