Posted on Tuesday, January 14, 2025
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by Outside Contributor
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California’s Democrat Party elites are feeling the burn of their own failures to protect their state from devastating, uncontrolled fires. No politician’s reputation has been sullied as much as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s.
As the wildfires in Los Angeles continue to rage, Newsom has sputtered and flailed—sometimes literally. He’s becoming the object of ire for appropriately irate Californians who are rightly asking why he and the mayor of Los Angeles failed to adequately prevent and prepare for these huge fires.
An angry mother whose neighborhood burned down confronted Newsom about his failed leadership, but Newsom tried to scurry away. He then said that he was “literally” calling President Joe Biden before saying he actually had no reception.
Sure.
The fact is that Newsom can’t answer why his state is so unprepared for fire danger. Nobody is really buying the cries of “climate change!” anymore, much to the legacy media’s shock and confusion.
In fact blaming “climate change” isn’t registering at all with Americans in the wake of the California fires.
Newsom and those who run California really do deserve much of the blame for not just the Los Angeles fires, but the towering infernos that have been ravaging the state for years. They’ve done a poor job of managing state land and a worse job of managing the state’s water resources. They seem uninterested in investing in fire prevention despite the state wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on countless useless projects, like the bullet train to nowhere.
According to Fox News, Newsom cut $100 million from the fire budget this year. Yes, spending on the issue is up from six years ago as Newsom angrily insists, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that Newsom deprioritized one of the most important problems the state has faced in the last decade.
Newsom and his allies in Sacramento would rather spend that money on resisting incoming President Donald Trump.
Left-wing politicians like Newsom insist that they’ve long foreseen the doom of climate change. But if California’s huge fires really are a result of climate change, why have they foreseen this doom and done nothing?
Where are California’s new reservoirs? The state hasn’t built one since 1979.
California Democrats, now so used to operating in a one-party state where the media essentially peddles the party line, haven’t been asked to govern in decades. They are totally unprepared for the storm now that their media allies can’t drown out the criticism.
This is what happens when government leaders only care about ideological pet projects and have no concern with being held accountable for results. California spent $24 billion on combatting homelessness over the last five years, but never bothered tracking the effectiveness of their programs. Is it any wonder this sort of governance extends to other areas too?
The Left cares a lot less about stopping the effects of climate change and a lot more about funding green initiatives—run by their friends and donors, of course—and transforming Western economies. They’ve used natural disasters to keep this scam going as long as possible.
California’s obsession with environmentalism is destroying its environment and making it impossible to fix once disaster has struck. Newsom likely knows this, which might explain why he announced that he’ll suspend an onerous environmental law that would impede rebuilding after the fires. That’s nice, but we’ll see if it lasts.
The last time Newsom committed the state to doing better land management it turned out to be less than a half-measure farce.
“In 2019, Newsom issued an executive order to devote more than $1 billion to wildfire prevention,” City Journal reported. “But a 2021 investigation found that the governor had misled the public about the acreage of fuel-reduction projects completed in the state: just 11,399 acres, versus his claim of 90,000.”
All show and no substance.
So, what comes next for Newsom?
If you recall, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, he was seen dining at a fancy restaurant while his state was almost totally shuttered. Somehow the slick governor wiggled out of that controversy and escaped being recalled.
But Newsom’s failure and lack of leadership this time is even more apparent, and the media environment is less forgiving. He’s getting a taste of what U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing right now with the explosion of anger over Pakistani rape gangs. After decades of having complete media control, left-wing institutionalists aren’t used to having to defend their failures to an angry public no longer accepting the force-fed Narrative.
Newsom may be in real trouble this time, especially given his larger political ambitions. Is this the kind of leadership that can appeal to the nation on the road to the White House?
The editors at The Free Press compared Newsom to another young media darling governor of New York whose career cratered because of failure during a natural disaster.
“In 1969, New York [M]ayor John Lindsay—like Newsom, a young and attractive liberal who dreamed of the presidency—saw his political career effectively end when a blizzard dropped 15 inches of snow on the city,” the editors wrote. “Streets went unplowed for days, leaving the city paralyzed. Lindsay’s White House dreams ended then and there, amid heckles from his constituents.”
Maybe Newsom survives this disaster in California, but his tenure in office will now be defined by his failure on the fire issue.
It’s hard not to see what’s happening in the Golden State, which is looking a lot more charred black these days, and not think that the country should avoid this kind of mismanagement at all costs.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jarrett Stepman.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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