I missed this last week, but multimillionaire financier Howard Ahmanson, one of the biggest early funders of Proposition 8, has left the Republican Party and become a Democrat.
Kathleen Pender of the Washington Post spoke with Ahmanson for a column.
In a rare interview Thursday, Ahmanson shared some of his thoughts about why he switched parties. In a word, taxes.
Specifically, he was offended by the California Republican Party's insistence during a recent state budget battle that there would be no tax increases for any reason, no matter what. "They're providing one issue, and it's just a very silly issue," Ahmanson told me by telephone.
Ahmanson's hardly a true-blue Democrat just yet. He donated more than $1 million to pass Proposition 8, including $400,000 of the early, critical seed money that put the measure on the ballot in the first place. He told Parker that gays should "come to Christ and then recover."
He said of welfare: "I hate the attitude that welfare, once granted, is a moral entitlement that can never be reduced. And Social Security and Medicare are included in my definition of welfare."
And he's a Bobby Jindal (the GOP governor of Louisiana) for president fan.
Still, the switch is worth noting. Ahmanson sent a column talking about his flip to the Orange County Register's editorial writer Steven Greenhut. In it, he takes issue with California Republicans' focus on taxes.
Well, I think I was reading about the budget struggles and threatened purges in the Legislature, and I was getting more and more tired and disgusted of it, and I realized that, had I been a Republican assemblyman, I could have hardly escaped being purged myself. The Republican Party of the State of California seems to have decided to narrow itself down to one article of faith, which may be described as NTESEBREE: No Tax Shall Ever Be Raised Ever Ever. Now, I'm concerned about this constant tax ratcheting, but I don't think this is the answer.
He has no kind words for the Democrats, either:
The Democratic Party in California, however, is now so big and diverse and all-inclusive that it has ABSOLUTELY NO PRINCIPLES WHATSOEVER. The Hollywood and San Francisco establishments within the Party may hold to some pretty detestable principles, but the party as a whole? I have not changed any of my opinions. There is not a single right-wing opinion I hold that some section of the Democratic Party doesn't support it.
@Nyx.CommentBody@