Opinion: Tax-and-spendinator?
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The LA Weekly‘s Marc Cooper covers some of the same ground as our Tuesday editorial about the increasingly obstructionist, increasingly irrelevant state GOP and its awkward relationship with the popular governor, then uncorks the following prediction:
Because Arnold values his own personal political legacy and trajectory more than Republican partisanship, sometime in this second term, he, and his Democratic allies, are indeed going to raise taxes. And why not? To make health care universal in California? To make us the national environmental leader? To achieve any of the monumental programs he wants attached to his name and record, Arnold will have no choice. And he’ll most likely have popular approval. Californians rarely balk at reasonable taxes when a clear, beneficial outcome is attached. Probably nothing would serve Schwarzenegger better than to confront a Republican legislative rebellion on his right flank. Staring down his own party’s anti-everything troglodytes would only consolidate his dominance of the political center and, with his current outreach to his left, might even give him the majority he would need to displace Boxer.