L.A. Times Columnist Blames Republicans for California’s Problems

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has figured out who’s to blame for California’s problems: Republicans.

Lopez made the argument in a column that ran in the Times on Saturday. While recognizing that Democrats deserve to be on the “hot seat,” Lopez argues that Republicans are to blame because they are not providing a competitive alternative to Democrats, and because some of the state’s worst policies were enacted when Republicans governed.

Lopez writes, for example, that homelessness stems in part from Gov. Ronald Reagan’s decision to shut down mental institutions, which were then widely viewed as inhumane:

[C]ivil libertarians and others argued that people with mental illness were being neglected and abused in the state’s mental hospitals. Three California state legislators, one Republican and two Democrats, produced theLanterman-Petris-Short Act, signed by Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, which put limits on involuntary psychiatric treatment and led to the closing of hospitals.

He also says that Republicans are to blame for crime, because the GOP won’t give up on the right to bear arms:

It’s more than a little bit hypocritical to bash crazy, reckless California on public safety when no amount of carnage in the nation, including mass shootings at shopping malls and schools (on Wednesday it was two students and two teachers dead at a Georgia high school), can loosen the gun lobby’s death grip on GOP lawmakers.

And Lopez adds a familiar argument: Republicans alienated Latino voters by supporting Proposition 187, which sought to deny services to illegal aliens. Add in conservative views on same-sex marriage and abortion, and — voilà! — Republicans are to blame:

The California GOP alienated many Latinos in the 1990s with Proposition 187’s ban on services for undocumented immigrants and Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s “they keep coming” TV ad. At the GOP’s fall convention last year, an attempt to remove opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage from the party platform was shot down.

Read Lopez’s full op-ed here.

California has become an effective one-party state over the past two decades, partly because the last Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, capitulated to pressure from unions and abandoned his reforms, demoralizing conservatives; partly because Democrats manipulate the rules of elections and ballot initiatives; and partly because the Republican voter base, particularly homeowners and small business owners, have simply moved elsewhere.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.