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Contributors
Patrick
Mallon -
Columnist
 California's
Liberal Dictatorship
The demise of Gray Davis...
[Patrick Mallon] 11/16/04
My
debut book, California Dictatorship: How Liberal Extremism
Destroyed Gray Davis, describes the penalties facing Democrats
at all levels for obstructing the will of the voters on almost
every issue they cannot win at the ballot box or by legislation,
while forcing their policies on a reluctant populace by judicial
fiat.
Equally important
is the level of public disdain and arrogance manifested by
the representatives themselves in concert with
loyal party operatives and a sympathetic elite press.
The book covers the period from the former governor’s first
term in 1999 to his removal from office in 2003. It is a story
of the rebellion of a populace so incensed with having their
political voice repeatedly undermined that they could no longer
see straight.
Because Davis
personified the legislature's destructive policies, he served
as the lightning rod for the voter’s
cumulative resentment and bitterness. The story has national
implications.
The Davis-Kerry Comparison
Before defining
the target audience and summarizing core chapters, it is important
to recognize that Gray Davis was grooming himself
to run for president in 2004. Governors have that historical
advantage. He had the resume, the impeccable educational credentials
and served his country honorably in a war, while holding powerful
positions in state government without drawing much attention.
He was steadily
advancing up the ladder until his oval office dreams started
to evaporate with the advent of the electricity
crisis in 2000.
While Davis doesn't possess the physical presence of John Kerry,
he is nonetheless rhetorically skilled and equally disciplined
as a debater. Admittedly, both suffer on the charisma meter.
Davis's tour of duty in Vietnam however, would never have undergone
the agonizing characterization thrust on Senator Kerry by the
Swift Boat Veterans.
Though the
military component is a singular aspect of the equation, and
the electricity problem is distinct from any individual,
national comparison, the substantive social issue that clearly
drove conservative Republicans and traditional Democrats against
the liberal elitism embodied by Davis and Kerry is the promotion
of gay marriage.
This polarizing
issue grew in prominence under Davis for four years, and was
magnified nationally when San
Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsome opened City Hall to thousands of gay weddings
that were later declared invalid. As California goes, so goes
the
nation? Not this time.
There is
no way to downplay, weasel out of, or otherwise ignore this
reality.
In California, domestic partnership rules signed
into law by Davis provide almost all the legal rights of marriage.
After 61 percent of California voters passed Proposition 22,
the law that defined marriage as that between a man and a woman,
Davis called the law "divisive" and told the public
to take a hike by creating a task force to sanction Vermont-style
homosexual "civil unions."
The November
4, 2004 Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook
was succinct on the issue: "Referendums against gay marriage
went 11 for 11 on Tuesday, winning even in Oregon where the 57%
to 43% landslide was the smallest majority among the 11. This
is not a message of intolerance toward gays; it is a rebuke to
those liberals who insist that courts impose their values on
venerable American institutions."
The Target Audience
The book is dedicated to empowering fainthearted independent
and conservative voters who have long been discouraged by the
communal tyranny and social demolition of political correctness.
In June 2002, I began an investigative reporting assignment
covering the California governor's race for NewsMax.com. This
led to wider exposure when the recall became a national story
by midsummer 2003.
When the
governor was formally removed from office that October, I had
made over 60 appearances on talk radio programs in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, as well as national shows
broadcast from Texas, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.
There was
never any intention to do a book, but the story grew wings.
When Hollywood personality Ben Stein called me on a Saturday
night in July to say that he liked the manuscript and would
write
an endorsement, the book simply had to be completed.
I ignore the taboos of elite, mainstream journalism and dissect
California's liberal dysfunction, exposing how a monopoly of
Democratic Party ideologues exploited their unchecked power to
bulldoze into law hugely unpopular policies.
The book explores in eye-opening detail how Davis defied the
voters on taxes, immigration, gay rights, English-only laws impacting
schools, and affirmative action, while leading the state to financial
catastrophe.
Have Democrats learned their lessons? Hardly!
Sacramento is still a haven for Trojan Horse policies that threaten
to undermine state government. Just ask Arnold.
Chapter Summary
I did not write this book to attack Gray Davis, but to deliver
a respectful, albeit critical, examination of the policies and
the party that operated to destroy the once-promising political
career of a man who could have become president. This statement
is not made dismissively. If Jimmy Carter could achieve the nation's
highest office, so could have Davis.
- However, Governor Davis decided to repeatedly adopt positions
and employ strategies that ran counter to the intentions of the
voting majority. Additionally, the state went from a $12 billion
budget surplus when Davis took office in 1999 to a $40 billion
deficit when he departed in 2003. That amounts to an imbalance
of roughly $1 billion in expenditures exceeding income per month.
Specific chapters describe:
- Advisers
and Consultants: Illustrates some of the more visible practitioners
of the Machiavellian art of war, Democrat style.
The unforgiving, calloused, no-surrender types who refuse
to back down from a verbal confrontation while exploiting
ideological
double standards.
- Gay Rights Trump Academics: As California K-12 academic performance
plummeted to embarrassing levels, Davis appeared to be
entirely beholden to, and was one of the major proponents of,
a strategy
to promote homosexual and transgender indoctrination into
the classroom.
- Defying
the Voters on English-Only: When Latino parents, frustrated
by lack of opportunities for their Spanish-speaking
children,
prompted the English-only initiative that passed by
a 61 percent voter margin, Davis obstructed full implementation
for political
gain with minority opponents who called the law "racist."
- The Electricity
Crisis: As Davis addictively raised campaign cash, he dodged
his duties and laid the blame
on both the
utility companies and the wholesale energy providers,
while angry residents
pointed fingers at the governor, renaming the blackouts "gray-outs."
- Defying the Voters on Immigration: Davis tactically
buried Proposition 187 in mediation. The law, passed
by 58 percent of
the voters in 1994, would have denied educational and
taxpayer-funded services to illegal immigrants. When
Davis and the Latino Caucus
connived to grant driver's licenses to two million
illegal immigrants in 2003, the governor sealed his
fate.
- The Recall
and the End: "They can take a shot. Then they’ll
get their ass kicked. Folks have been underestimating me for
a long time. Don’t worry about it, man. I’ve won
five elections in this state. And I’m not
going to lose one."
Why Democrats Need to Heed the Warnings
Davis, and many Democratic politicians, are seeing their careers
vanish because of a virulent strain of uncompromising liberalism;
a simplistically seductive mindset that mandates a social revolution
under the specious guise of tolerance and diversity, while impugning
legitimate opposition with personal and racial epithets to avoid
comparative accountability.
Democrats now face a crossroads: either find the middle ground
as reasonable people do and adapt their agenda to growing numbers
of activated voters of all demographics who want to protect what
they have earned, or continue to attack the traditional family,
excoriate American culture, strip morality from our value system,
and debase conventional wisdom in the hopes of fooling half of
the population who vote Democrat for no other reason than that
they hate Republicans like George Bush.
My friend Jill Stewart described the situation best when she
foretold in 1999 what would eventually happen to Davis and Sacramento's
Democrats when they were in possession of unchallenged power:
"Single-party
political systems have been disastrous throughout history because
they are a formula for corruption, repression,
and the cult of personality. Disregarding this maxim, California
voters essentially created a one-party system in Sacramento last
November when Democratic Governor Gray Davis won office and Democratic
majorities were elected to both the state assembly and senate.
As a lifelong Democrat who hates the Democratic Party because
it is generally led by a mentally challenged bunch of smugly
inept social engineers, I shuddered to consider the possibilities."
The 2004
election reinforced the omen of the 2003 recall, that Democrats
and
Republicans alike are rejecting the corrupted value
system of a party that has been seized and controlled by the "new
Democrats."
These are the miscreants who call demands that a registered voter
produce an ID card to cast a ballot a form of “minority
discrimination,” who call protecting traditional marriage
bigotry, who deride moral and ethical concerns about partial-birth
abortion as an attack on women, and who screech "racism" as
an odious tactical weapon when the quality of their arguments
fail.
Davis, like
Kerry, violated raw standards of political character and falsely
assumed
that if he could control how his policies
and actions were publicly dispersed in the cheering section of
a like-minded print and TV media, the people would arrive at
the intended interpretation. He bet the farm on public ignorance
and exclusive reliance on these predisposed sources—and
lost. The rise of talk radio and the Internet was instrumental
in spreading the truth in such a sufficient quantity that underreported
fact overcame widespread fiction.
My objective
is to put forward a compelling story that warns future liberal
dictators
about the consequences of their excesses
and attitudes and the penalties for ignoring the source from
which their power resides and ends—the people. It is for
you, the reader, to judge whether the author has succeeded.
Attitude
is everything, and when an elected official reveals the contempt
they hold
either for their opponent or for the voters,
it has a merciful way of catching up with them. Senator Kerry,
after apparently winning all three debates with the president,
said "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot." Gray
Davis called the effort to recall him from office "sour
grapes by a bunch of losers."
It has been
said that cultural liberalism continues to cost Democrats elections.
It cost one man in the Golden State his
career. Read about it in California Dictatorship: How Liberal
Extremism Destroyed Gray Davis. CRO
California
Dictatorship: How Liberal Extremism Destroyed Gray Davis,
can be purchased at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.
Also see http://www1.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=26229
Patrick will be on with Melanie Morgan on KSFO-560, San Francisco
(11/22 at 8:00 a.m. PST), and Larry Rifkin on 1320 WATR in Waterbury,
CT (12/11 at 1:30 p.m. EST). He can be contacted at gohabsgo@cox.net
This piece
first appeared at NewsMax.com
copyright 2004 Patrick Mallon
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