State & Local Politics

The ignominious fall of former governor and cheating husband Arnold Schwarzenegger is pretty pathetic in itself. As allegations of still more women who slept with the “governator” spring up (ahem), there’s one question that many political watchers should be asking — what’s next for the Republican Party in California?

I know what you’re thinking: “What does a Hollywood actor’s sexual peccadillos have to do with the state’s political party?” Nothing, if you look at the question that way. But let’s be honest, until Arnold Schwarzenegger came along in that 70-something person gubernatorial race over seven years ago, the state’s Republicans were floundering.

Back in April, two Louisiana state Republican legislators introduced a “birther” bill, clearly to score some political points and try to make themselves relevant, I suppose. Specifically, the measure required that any presidential candidate seeking to be on the Louisiana ballot would need to swear out an affidavit that he was in fact a U.S. citizen, then offer a birth certificate to validate the claim.

Less than a week later, the office of Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said he would sign the bill if it made it to his desk.

I have just one question surrounding this issue. Are you serious?

It is said with some fright here on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War that we face the same divisions again in red-state and blue-state. Demagogues like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow used the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War as an occasion to paint advocates of state sovereignty and the principle of nullification as racist “neo-confederates,” says a commentary from the Tenth Amendment Center. It is much the same as that which came out of New Haven and New York in the time preceding the invasions of the Old South, Texas and the Mormon lands.

“Keep going west,” — Dennis Hopper, “The Last Movie”

Pictures go a long way in explaining; how would Hemingway have done without the masterful beard or James Joyce without the severe Irish angles and heavy shadowing in his face? George Orwell said we are all responsible for our own faces by the time we get to 50: Your picture becomes your icon. Which is why George W. Bush may have gotten off to such a rough start. Posed cutting brush in a brand new cowboy hat, he brought to mind the “I’m a lumberjack” skit of Monty Python. Not a lumberjack, not a cowboy and not really a Texan.

It was a portrait of insincerity and the Republicans are still trying to work it through. The Bushes, try as they might, are plagued by this inauthenticity and don’t seem to fit or belong in Texas. H.W. had the same problem with the cowboy boots. Luckily, Jeb makes no claim to the West and so the traditionalists — the establishment; that is, the Eastern Establishment — hope today to bring it all back home with Jersey’s Chris Christie in front and Florida’s ex-Gov. Jeb as backup.

With a memoir in the works, it's become increasingly clear that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has Sarah Palin-sized national ambitions, writes columnist Chris Haire of the Charleston City Paper. And he says he can’t stop writing about Haley, the formidable and elegant new Tea Party governor of South Carolina.

She brings a very distinctive character and a new vision to the South. Some of the Tea Party elements moving up to the 2012 primary season have a vengeance quality — Bachmann and Ron Paul — which accentuates the dark side of the movement. But Haley was a Tea Party figure there at the beginning and can bring in the positive elements of state responsibility and sovereignty without the faux-revolutionary jargon of Beck and Bachmann.

The first nationally important election since November 2010 will be almost certainly occur this summer in multiple recall votes for Wisconsin state senators. The first petition with the required signatures will be filed imminently, probably today (Friday), for a recall vote to replace Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke.

Multiple Democratic sources in Wisconsin tell me that all of the recall petitions are gathering significant support, ahead of schedule, and multiple petitions with the required signatures will filed in the coming days and weeks.

The signatures will first have to be formally verified. Of the eight Republican senators being targeted for recall by Democrats, if three of them are defeated in recall elections the Wisconsin Senate will shift from Republican to Democratic.

First I heard about ideas like this when driving through Chapel Hill, N.C., 15 years ago and listening to a radio interview with Dr. J. Michael Hill, writer and founder of The League of the South, a secessionist organization that seeks through democratic and non-violent means a “free and independent Southern republic.”

It was a local NPR show and quite a generous interview, as I recall. The interviewer brought to her story that morning surprise so featured in NPR stories in those days when it was discovered that penguin husbands sat on the eggs (Huh!”) or pig snouts could actually smell out truffles in the hills of North Carolina. Now that is something to think about. And here was a guy who wanted to reawaken the Confederacy.

Before the cry of the Orcs went up, he did manage to get a word in. Isn’t it against the law to, you know, secede, asked the interviewer?

It was the greatest victory for labor in decades. It was the beginning of a progressive revival in America. It will be the end of Republican control of the Wisconsin Senate. It is the beginning of the end for the anti-worker, anti-wages, anti-jobs, anti-benefits, anti-democracy, soon-to-be former Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there they go again. In their relentless war against workers, in their union-busting fanaticism, Republicans are now attacking firefighters and police as well as those who teach Johnny and Susie in our classrooms.

I refer, of course, to the Ohio Republicans. First the Republican governor of Ohio had to apologize to the men and women who protect our communities serving with the police for comments he unwisely made. Now the Ohio Legislature, acting more extreme than the extreme Republican governor of Wisconsin, has added firefighters and police to the list of their demons whose rights to collective bargaining they seek to destroy.

What a brilliant prank! Now we know the truth. When he thought he was talking to his billionaire benefactor from the far right, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) did the impossible. He simultaneously sounded like a true megalomaniac with an immense notion of his historical greatness — and a fawning shill for special interests!

Considering his modest poll numbers, one would think Walker would have a more modest vision of his personal destiny.