Monday, June 2, 2008

Property rights: The Achilles Heel for GOP electoral success in November

by Steve Greenhut

One of the guilty pleasures I expect to partake of later this year is watching the Democratic electoral tsunami obliterate Republicans in the November election. It's not because I often agree with Democrats, who manage to get almost everything wrong, but nothing but a disaster can shake any sense into a GOP that, as one prominent Republican told me, has "engaged in a wholesale abandonment of its limited-government principles."

The California GOP can't figure out its irrelevance, and the Republican governor insists that he is protecting the "little guy" by taxing, borrowing and spending on an even grander scale than his Democratic predecessor. GOP legislators are busy sending out hit pieces in the primary, swearing to do everything short of setting up machine-gun turrets on the Southern border to keep out illegal immigrants, even though no legislative candidate will have any influence whatsoever on immigration policy.

But for all this cluelessness and pandering, the state GOP and its allies in the business community have been unable to unite behind a core pro-freedom position – one that's popular among Californians of all parties and all ethnic and demographic groups. It's the issue of property rights and, in particular, the narrower matter of eminent-domain reform.

For more on this op/ed piece, go to The Orange County Register

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