Regular readers know COTTonLINE has taken a more-than-dim view of California's current trajectory and prospects. Writing for Tablet, Walter Russell Mead sees a way for CA to work through its manifold problems with the help of a Republican Party that sides with the state's poor and immigrants.
That party would favor development of water projects and power generation via reducing interference by greens and NIMBYites. It would encourage home ownership and making the American dream attainable by all.
Along the way, Mead coins a new term for those blocking development and growth in CA, calling them the "turquoisie," an obvious play on the term "bourgeoisie." He explains the turquoisie as being:
The upper- and upper-middle-class coalition of conventional blue model progressive ideologues and green climate activists who unite around anti-growth policies.
Mead's column is lengthy, but his argument has historic merit and could conceivably succeed. I remain a skeptic but CA's remaining, disillusioned Republicans might as well give Mead's Rx a try, as I see no other path forward for them.
If they fail, the alternative is a future CA like that portrayed in the sci fi film Elysium, minus the orbital Beverly Hills.
