From the L.A. Weekly.

Okay, granted this is a screaming commie columnist from a screaming commie free-from-the-box-on-the-corner rag, but I thought it would be instructive to show the loathing and boundless contempt that the left holds for conservatives. And more than a few of these ideas are circulating through the Democratic mainstream.

I knew it was all over for Dick Riordan two weeks ago as I watched conservative Kansas Senator Sam Brownback get turned into the entrée at a red-meat Republican luncheon supposedly in his honor. This poor guy Brownback, usually 10 degrees to the right of the NRA on most issues, was doing just fine entertaining and even wooing a Beverly Hills Hotel banquet room full of blue-haired ladies and other GOP stalwarts; that is, until he suggested — in an answer to a question I threw his way — that the Bush administration ought to get back to its pre–September 11 position of finding a way to “normalize” if not legalize millions of undocumented Mexicans who live and work in the U.S.

Liberals cannot seem to fathom why anyone could possibly object to taking millions of "undocumented" (one of the many politically-correct euphemisms for "illegal") immigrants and suddenly granting them the right to stay here. Oh, all you other Latino suckers standing there in line for years to get in legally? Screw you and the horse you rode in on. You're probably too bright to be the kneejerk illiterate Democratic voters we're looking for anyway.

Amnesty for illegals sets a terrible precedent that would wind up basically collapsing our borders. Perhaps some sort of work program could be set up to help people who want to work here, but that's not what the Democrats want. Guest workers can't vote, and if you can't vote, you're excess baggage to a Democrat.

A gale storm of xenophobic gusts quickly swept through the room and nearly blew the slightly built and visibly shaken Republican senator off the dais. The guest of honor became the plate du jour: hamburger. The message from the floor was unmistakable: “We don’t want to be enlightened. We don’t want to face reality. And you can’t make us.”

Of course, the only reason that anyone could object to legalizing millions of illegals would be that they are not as wise and enlightened as the liberals, who are better at telling us what "reality" is than anyone else. What other reason could there be? Oh, yeah. It's racism. What else?

...The political bottom line: California Republicans seemingly want to live in a one-party state for the next 25 years.

So why is he complaining? Because real leftists don't like Democrats either. More on that later.

After Pete Wilson mobilized the Latino vote against the GOP with Proposition 187 and after Dan Lungren’s mistaken run for governor turned the IQ-over-95 crowd against his own party in 1998, producing the greatest California Democratic sweep in 40 years, some reasonable Republicans tried to stanch the hemorrhaging. Party chairman Shawn Steel and an Orange County–based PAC of business moderates labored to drag the party back to the center.

Prop 187 passed, and we were treated here in California to the real Democratic attitude towards the "will of the people," which was the will of the people is valid only if it is the same as our will. 63 percent of whites voted for it, but so did 47 percent of black and Asian voters, and even 33 percent of Latino voters.

Again, note the "IQ-over-95" crowd crack. Conservatives are idiots. This is a given.

Riordan’s candidacy could have been the catalyst for the shift. Instead, the right-wing tail of the party relentlessly flailed away at Riordan, stripping him of any real shot and eventually sinking the rest of the party with him. “You thought the Lungren fiasco was bad for us?” mused one top Republican moderate on election eve. “With Bill Simon as our candidate, now we’re staring at ‘Lungren Plus.’” There are fears the Republicans could lose more
ground in the state Legislature and that even big-time corporate funders could go irretrievably Democratic (already a number of chambers of commerce have defected from their traditional partnerships with Republicans). Predicting the outcome of the Gray Davis–Bill Simon matchup in November, the same despondent Republican said gloomily: “It might get as close as 10 percent.”

The Republicans who supported Riordan are the same country-club, status-quo, big-time-corporate-funder Republicans that the left usually believes are monsters from the deepest abyss of hell. Why the heck should leftists suddenly quote them as being someone we should listen to? Does this make sense?

It wasn’t just the Neanderthal wing of the party that sunk Riordan — and any hope for a Republican renaissance. Terminator Gray Davis intervened directly into the Republican primary and steamrollered the former mayor with $10 million in TV ads attacking Riordan simultaneously from the left and the right (not a difficult position for a slitherer like the governor). I had warned in this column some weeks ago that when Riordan announced he was “tough enough” to turn the state around, it must have set off a round of belly laughs from the governor and his enforcer Garry South — two guys who eat “toughness” for breakfast. Now they’re laughing and belching.

Again, "Neanderthal wing." One wonders how Republicans manage to find their mouths with a toothbrush in the morning. He's right about Davis and his goons, who are the type of politicians who would cheerfully disembowel their own grandmothers with a rusty boat hook if it would keep him in political power. Unfortunately, our current system tends to select for such.

Note that the author is apparently no fan of Davis either. The true leftists are disappointed with the Democratic Party, which is far to the right of where they would like to be. The true leftists hope for a true visionary, someone who can Really Change Society. You know...kind of like Mao or Pol Pot.

Some eight months ago, Riordan was told by his embryonic advisory staff that Davis would go after him and how Davis would go after him. But as Riordan’s campaign leadership was taken over by the most unimaginative of Republican hacks, he was steered — unarmed — into a direct confrontation with the Battleship Gray, and the bloody result was totally predictable. Riordan also diligently drilled most of the holes in his campaign vessel. His human foibles are undeniably part of his charm, but they aren’t the right attributes for taking on one of the most humorless, dour but brilliantly ruthless politicians in America.



Riordan had two choices before him: either run as the Best Republican, or the Best Visionary. For the first option, he would have had to run to his right and pander to the frothy fundamentalists hoping to shave off enough points to win in a low-turnout primary. The second option would have meant running a campaign infused with a McCain-like independence and integrity that would have brought waves of unlikely but enthused moderate Republican voters into the booths to swamp the hardcore loonies and scare the bejesus out of Messrs. Davis and South. In the end, he did neither. Dick did dick.



Hmmm...seems to have a high opinion of McCain. One should think long and hard about that.

GOP chairman Steel, an old anti-war comrade of mine from college days (I kid you not), is straining to put the best face on matters. “Davis still has a lot to be afraid of,” he told me after assessing Riordan’s demise. “He’s shown he can invade our primary with his $10 million, but people still hate him, his negatives are higher than ever. And a whole lot of moderates are really pissed off at Davis’ tactics.”



Maybe. But Davis is likely licking his thin lips thinking about how much fun he’s gonna have pounding Bill Simon into the “extremist” box. Check back in October to see if Simon is still wearing that trademark robotic grin he’s been flashing the last few weeks. If he is, it’ll likely be more a grimace issuing up from some of his aching nether regions than a rejoicing coming from poll numbers.

Some of my Democratic friends are ecstatic about the ongoing crash of the California Republicans. I’m not so sanguine. The California Democratic Party has become a shell and mostly a shill — for ever narrower special interests. Two million bucks is the take the party gets just from that font of progressivism, the prison-guard lobby. Nothing would be better for the state — and even for liberals, progressives and reformers — than to have a vigorous, enlightened, moderate and viable Republican Party out there putting pressure on and competing with the Democrats.



The "if only the Republicans were Democrats, they could win" theory, yet again. It would be interesting to see some details on exactly what propositions a "vigorous, enlightened, moderate and viable Republican Party" would have that would actually "compete" with the Democrats. Exactly how would they differ from Democratic positions? Especially since a "vigorous, enlightened, moderate and viable Republican Party" would apparently hold no real conservative positions. Any ideas, anyone?

If the best an uncontested Democratic Party can produce is four more years of Gray Davis, then all I can say is, please wake me up when it’s all over.