[Sierabiera]

The Repugs just double downed. The Senate Minority Leader had compromised by agreeing to about $10 billion in tax increases, with the rest of the $40+ billion deficit coming from draconian cuts.

So the Republican caucus just fired him and is replacing him with a Repub says no tax increases at all.

You are right the extremists, and both parties in California are dominated by extremists because the gerrymandered district (by BOTH parties) tend to let extremists win primaries while the Nov elections are meaningless, and the extremists mounted a coupe against the state Republican leadership for daring to work towards a compromise solution. Make no mistakes the extremists absolutely control the state Republican party in this state and they'll attack people on their own side who don't tow the party line. The former (as of yesterday) state Republican leader's only fault was agreeing that it is mathematically impossible to end the deficit with just budget cuts (there is more deficit spending by the state as a percentage of the budget then there is decressionary spending to cut) and so some modest tax increases would be needed. For admitting that basic fact in public the right wing extremists had him removed as leader of the state Republican Party. That basically tells you all you need to know about who is responsible for shutting down the state government.

It's like 1998 all over again when the Republicans refused to pass a budget and shut down the federal government and just like 1998 this will blow up in their faces. When sick and dying people can no longer get health care because MediCAL isn't paying any bills, and when unemployed people stop getting their unemployment insurance checks, and when people can't go to the DMV, when the highway patrol/state troopers stop working because they're not being paid, and when when prisons are shut down because there is no money to buy inmates food, and when courts shut down because no one is getting paid, and a million other things then citizens will look around for someone to blame. The blame will almost certainly fall on the extremists who refused to make ANY compromise in order to get a state budget passed. Mark my words this will blow up in the faces of the state Republican Party.