[leareliovag]

More evidence of the civil war percolating within the Republican party. Hard-liners are a small portion of the party, but thanks to Fox News and talk radio, they've managed to inflict enough fear into the overall party that centrists are afraid of their own shadow and hard-liners have forced the party into bottleneck after bottleneck. They've become furniture that the rest of the working government governs around, protestors chained to their ideological trees.

I strongly believe that the majority of Republican legislators in office before the 2008 elections actually had some intention to govern, but they were threatened, lobbied and otherwise cowed into fealty to the spittle-flecked screamers that Fox News so idolizes. Fewer were left after the 2008 and even fewer after the 2010 elections, and the remaining moderates have all gone into hiding, voting in lockstep with the angry, tiny piece of their party that wants nothing productive to happen.

LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,4748539.story

After years of sitting on the bench, watching much of the state's business being conducted with little regard for their input, California Republicans in recent months had an opportunity to share the reins of government. Now, that appears to be gone.

The Democratic governor and legislative leaders offered the GOP a rare chance to shape key policies — and mitigate several that were forged on the other side of the aisle over more than a decade. GOP legislation was suddenly on the front burner. Rolling back government employee pensions, easing regulations on business, limiting the growth of government all seemed within reach.

...

Today, after the collapse of those negotiations, many in the Capitol are asking whether, in declining to provide those four "ayes," the Republicans have cemented their fate as a dying minority party in this largely Democratic state.

...

The collapse of talks was a major victory for the activist core of the party, including the bloggers and talk radio hosts who make it their mission to keep GOP lawmakers from drifting toward the political middle.

"No Budget Deal is Much Better Than A Bad Budget Deal," trumpeted a headline on the Flash Report, the sacred online text for party activists. "There is NO public policy trade off that makes it okay to then vote to place taxes onto a special election ballot," the article said.

It referred to the five GOP Senate Republicans who had been involved in budget negotiations with the governor as the "Rogue 5."

As hardliners have tightened their grip on California's Republican Party, it has continued to lose ground. The GOP has no statewide officeholders and a thin bench.