Born in the Golden State Suburbs

The present day hard-shell Republican Party began its rise in the California suburbs of the 1960's. Goldwater's landslide loss to LBJ in 1964 is usually where people start. And there's some merit to that. Goldwater carried five states from the Deep South, almost the same five that third-party candidate George Wallace carried four years later (Goldwater won South Carolina; Wallace, Arkansas). This prompted Nixon to launch his Southern Strategy, which rapidly accelerated the conversion of the Republican Party.

But the first big win for the new, hard-shell type of Republican was when Ronald Reagan demolished incumbent Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial election of 1966. Then in 1978 there was Howard Jarvis' anti-tax uprising enshrined in California's Proposition 13. Reagan's ascension to the presidency two years later shocked many but it shouldn't have. The handwriting was on the wall for all to see.

Paul Krugman's column today, "Lessons From a Comeback," floats an argument that has merit. Since California is a bellwether of conservative Republicanism shouldn't we be paying attention to what's happening in the Golden State? And what's happening there is that the GOP has dwindled to such a small number that they can no longer block, even with supermajority rules, any and all legislation. As Krugman says,

California isn’t a state in which liberals have run wild; it’s a state where a liberal majority has been effectively hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority that, thanks to supermajority rules, has been able to block effective policy-making. 

And that’s where things get really interesting — because the era of hamstrung government seems to be coming to an end. Over the years, California’s Republicans moved right as the state moved left, yet retained political relevance thanks to their blocking power. But at this point the state’s G.O.P. has fallen below critical mass, losing even its power to obstruct — and this has left Mr. Brown free to push an agenda of tax hikes and infrastructure spending that sounds remarkably like the kind of thing California used to do before the rise of the radical right. 

And if this agenda is successful, it will have national implications. After all, California’s political story — in which a radicalized G.O.P. fell increasingly out of touch with an increasingly diverse and socially liberal electorate, and eventually found itself marginalized — is arguably playing out with a lag on the national scene too. 

So is California still the place where the future happens first? Stay tuned.

Nationally the radical right's control of the House of Representatives appears to be on more solid footing -- because of the gerrymander and Citizens United. The House gives them all the structure they need to block and stymie for the foreseeable future; that, and they also control the Supreme Court. So anything progressive that squeaks through the legislature will be overturned by the judiciary.

Let's see how the GOP manages immigration reform. After the 2012 presidential election Republicans know they cannot win another national contest polling as low they do with Latinos. If they botch immigration, they'll likely be blocked from controlling the executive for a long time. But, really, why should hard-shell conservatives care? They're getting almost all of what they want with the current set up.