VDH on How Liberalism Destroyed California
Jun 18, 2019
RUSH: Victor Davis Hanson was on with Chatsworth Osborne Jr. last night on the Fox News Channel. And I want to play these two bites. Victor Davis Hanson lives in California as a farmer. He lives and works, he lives on a farm not far from Fresno. And he knows the circumstances of life away from the coast. But he also works at the Hoover Institute, which is a Never Trumper conservative think tank at Stanford in Palo Alto, and he goes there occasionally.
So he’s got the experience of life throughout the state of California. There’s nobody better to accurately describe what California has become. Now, I want to play this also because yesterday we had the news that the governor, Gavin Newsom, said that Republicans are becoming passé, a party headed for the garbage bin, the dustbin of history. And he said the reason for it is that the Republicans proposed denying health care and welfare benefits, free education to illegal immigrants. It was Prop 187.
Prop 187 passed. Fifty-nine percent of California voted for Prop 187 in 1994. Gavin Newsom said that’s what killed the Republican Party. It’s not what killed the Republican Party. A federal judge overturning it and throwing it out. What killed the Republican Party is numbers and demographics, open borders, bringing illegals in and finding ways to flood the culture and the electoral system.
Anyway, in discussing California, why I think Trump should go there, as you just heard me stealthfully mention to the vice president, California, as I said the other day, it’s beautiful. But it’s so many different things in one state, and there’s nobody better at describing it and characterizing it than Victor Davis Hanson. So he’s on with Tucker Carlson. The question: “In what sense is California a Third World state, in your opinion?â€
HANSON: It has all the symptoms of what we associate with failed states. It’s got the highest basket of income tax, gasoline taxes, sales tax, and yet its schools are rated in the last 10%, the bottom 10% of the nation’s test scores. One-third of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California, a fifth of the population is below the poverty line, a fifth of all the homeless people in the United States live in California. We have the most billionaires of any state in the nation. And then we have the largest underclass.
RUSH: Now, stop and think about that. How can that be with liberal Democrats running it? Aren’t billionaires supposed to be eviscerated? Aren’t billionaires supposed to — all their money taken from ’em and redistributed in socialist economies and societies where everything is equal and everyone’s the same and there’s no pain because nobody’s ever laughed at, nobody’s ever made fun of, nobody ever loses.
And yet California, look at these numbers. A fifth of the population is below the poverty line, a fifth of all homeless live in California. The most billionaires of any state and the largest underclass with liberal Democrats running this state for decades. How can that be?
And then Joe Biden’s out there saying the first thing he’s gonna do, his Mondale impersonation, gonna raise taxes, the first thing he’s gonna do is raise taxes. These billionaires are gonna start paying — nope, nope, not. If it’s not happening in California, it isn’t happening, ’cause every damn one of these liberal Democrat politicians wants to be one of these billionaires or as close to one as they can get. So the comments continue. This is Mr. Hanson talking about how Gavin Newsom got it all wrong in deciding and determining what happened to Republicans out there.
HANSON: Governor Newsom’s got it exactly wrong. Twenty-five years ago when we had Prop 187, that passed by 59% of the population. It fueled Pete Wilson’s come from behind victory over Kathleen Brown. It was very popular. But three days later a federal court invalidated it, and that got rid of it, the deterrent factor, and people wanted to come to California, often illegally, and they resided here illegally. And that was unfortunately part of a perfect storm where at the same time four to six million people over the next 25 years said, if I’m gonna pay the highest basket of taxes and get the worst roads, infrastructure, public schools, and among the highest crime rates, then I might as well go where there’s no income taxes.
RUSH: That’s right. It’s a combination of the influx of illegals being granted endless warfare causing the beginning of people leaving the state. Many of them were Republicans. But it wasn’t, as the governor said, the passage or the support of Prop 187 that killed the Republican Party in California. Quite the opposite.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/06/18/vdh-on-how-liberalism-destroyed-california/