California secession shows state’s rebelliousness

OPINION:

Golden State progressives have finally escaped the time loop of Groundhog Day, and conservatives should rejoice.

For years it’s been the Groundhog Day nightmare of California liberals: They’re finally breaking free of Republican rule, putting the finishing touches on their progressive paradise, and calling for the momentous vote that will declare their state an independent nation.

And then suddenly they’re jarred awake by the radio alarm clock. Wayne Fontana is singing “The purpose of a man is to love a woman …” It’s Nov. 5, 2008, and California’s Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative, has just been voted into law, catching the entire left asleep at the switch.

But like Bill Murray’s character in the classic movie, California liberals decided to live and learn from Groundhog Day. They recognized their political plight and began methodically plowing through the drifts outside their snow-covered cabanas.

With a little help from their friends on the U.S. District Court, a referendum-happy electorate and a gullible Republican governor, they transformed the Golden State into an ant hill of liberal industriousness, to the point where today they enjoy overwhelming dominance in both houses of the state legislature, an unflinching leftist governor in Jerry Brown, and U.S. House congressional districts that continue to be safely “Jerrymandered” in favor of Democratic representatives.

In fact, by 2016, Republican voter strength was so depleted, none of their candidates in the open primary could even qualify to run for Barbara Boxer’s vacant U.S. Senate seat in the general election.

Now, flush with Capitol capital, California’s hard core progressives are no longer just tilting at windmills. They’re on their way to putting one in every front yard, mandating solar panels on every roof, and even “monitoring individuals’ fuel consumption records,” according to the “Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act” proposed by California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon.

So why is it, considering the skyrocketing success of their progressive agenda, the state’s left wing suddenly feels the need to secede from the Union?

Simply put: President Trump.

Before the election, California liberals were still content to see themselves as first among equally enlightened states, and as the incubator for the nation’s next generation of Democratic stars, from gubernatorial front-runner Gavin Newsom, to newly minted U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, to former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Whatever lingering concerns they had about Republican congressional gains during the Obama years, national leaders had assured them that the last traces of Reaganism would disappear under Hillary’s eight-year reign. What remained of the “old, uneducated, white, racist” GOP would be drowned in a demographic deluge of black and brown voters, beginning Nov. 8.

They even touted the Republican National Committee’s own post-2012-election “autopsy” — which essentially agreed with them — as proof of a cataclysmic Trump loss that would wash away the GOP on Election Day.

Well, they got their cataclysm, all right.

And once the flood waters had subsided on Nov. 9, they got a clear view of the devastation. California liberals surveyed the damage and realized that the extra 4.2 million votes they had delivered to Hillary — which had overwhelmingly secured her popular vote victory — meant absolutely nothing.

Then, after watching the campaign’s pitiful attempts to blame everyone but themselves, the California contingent simply channeled their anger into a steely resolve to find a solution for what could be a decades-long losing battle against a conservative presidency, Congress and Supreme Court.

First, they hired former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder to “protect California’s … policies on climate change, health care, civil rights and immigration,” from any threat from the Trump administration, according to California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

Then “Calexit” groups began to form, with Louis Marinelli, founder of YesCalifornia.org, beginning a statewide campaign to collect the 586,000 signatures needed to secure a nationhood proposition on the November 2018 ballot. If passed, it will pave the way for California to become a sovereign country propelled by the sixth-largest economy in the world.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Californians’ support for secession from the Union at a remarkable 32 percent, 12 percent higher than just two years ago, and just 18 percentage points away from a majority.

And while the irony of California leftists becoming the greatest states’ rights advocates since Jefferson Davis might be lost on them, the vote for nationhood might actually be won.

And that could be the ultimate win-win for both the left and the right.

America’s largest collection of liberals gets its own sanctuary country with open borders, free health care, free drugs, free education, free abortions, free bicycles, generous pensions and a 55 percent corporate tax to pay for it all.

The rest of us get a cool trillion dollars a year from California companies desperate to repatriate before they have to pay for it all.

Add in three branches of government for two generations — thanks to wiping California off the electoral map — and you’ve got what we conservatives have been dreaming about — over and over and over.

• Timothy Philen is the author of “You CAN Run Away From It!” (Harper&Row/Lippincott).