In California, the Minority Still Rules
By Peter Schrag
There was a lot of predictable opinion last week that Sacramento Republicans were a little too quick to celebrate their “victory” in forcing Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats to pass a budget without new taxes or extensions of expiring taxes.
According to the overnight wisdom, the Reps missed their chance to extract pension reform, regulatory reform and maybe even a so-called hard spending cap in return for some give in putting tax extensions on the ballot. Even some conservatives urged them to do it and then expect (hope?) that the voters would reject them.
But given everything that’s been going on both in California and in Washington, the GOP has the Democrats, the governor and the president of the United States all playing on its field by its rules. Democrats are negotiating with one another about what to cut and how much. Nobody is trying to make the strong case for taxes that urgently needs to be made. On that one, Barack Obama wimped out two years ago.