Standing in the playground of a preschool, Gray Davis assured
reporters this week that he would fight the now-certified recall
effort like a “Bengal tiger.” The preschool background befit the
whimpering depths to which his political career has fallen.
The likelihood of a Davis recall is a welcome sign for a state
suffocating under a $38 billion deficit. It is no mere lark but a
life preserver thrown out to rescue a state sinking under Davis’s
corruption and mismanagement. The seriousness of the crisis is
perhaps best seen in companies fleeing Davis’s quasi-socialist
policies.
Countrywide Financial Corp., one of the top employers in the
state with some 30,000 employees, recently announced that it would
seek its expansion outside of California. “I am sad to say that
California, where Countrywide has been headquartered for more than
30 years, does not provide a business climate that is conducive to
cost control or business productivity,” its CEO plainly explained.
The press has also reported that Fidelity National Financial plans
to relocate to Florida. California’s business climate is too
“oppressive,” said its CEO, citing the state’s loose, job-killing
workers’ compensation system.
Trial lawyers, union hacks, and various species of governmental
parasites love California. But those not at the Davis trough are
finding it more and more inhospitable. Businessmen rank the state
as the worst business environment in the country, according to the
Wall Street Journal. The state’s credit rating ranks at
the bottom, its sales and income taxes rank at the top, and Davis
is itching to increase them even more.
The recall law was written to clean up messes like this one. The
Republicans, for the good of the state, must run a serious
candidate to replace Davis. If they dribble the ball off their knee
again, Californians will find it hard to forgive them.
One promising development is Tom McClintock’s announcement to
San Francisco broadcasters Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan that he
will run in the recall election. He is the most credible and
principled of the Republicans considered for the race. Known as a
budget hawk — precisely what the state needs at the moment —
state senator McClintock was the one bright spot in the
Republicans’ dismal showing last year. Though badly outspent by his
multimillionaire opponent, McClintock came within a hair of
becoming the state’s controller.
What good would the recall do if it merely meant the replacement
of a liberal Democrat with a liberal Republican, or one frivolous
pol for another? McClintock’s hardheadedness is the pledge of
seriousness the Republicans need in order to show that the recall
is not sour grapes, power politics, or an exercise in vanity. The
recall is above all about a self-inflicted budget crisis, and
McClintock is an authentic budget cutter. Many California
Republicans are just tax-and-spend Democrats in slow motion.
McClintock is not one of them. Long before it was fashionable to
decry Davis’s budget-busting, McClintock drew attention to the 37%
spike in state spending. He was a champion of the discarded Gann
amendment that restricted increases in state spending to increases
in population and inflation. Had Davis heeded his calls, the state
would be awash in surpluses not deficits. Having resisted
tax-and-spend Democrat budgets of the past — while many of his
Republican colleagues caved to them — McClintock has authority
when he says that he would use his executive powers to reverse the
car tax Davis has tripled and slash the mounds of fat in
Sacramento.
The unions are rushing to Davis’s side for good reason. He has
drained the budget as their Sacramento sugar daddy, bloating it up
with outrageous expenditures like the Institute for Labor and
Employment, a union “think-tank” at the University of California he
earmarked millions to establish.
The Bengal tiger is devouring the state. The Republicans will
need more than a kindergarten cop to stop him.
