cold

Hey, Maldonado, wait a minute...

It is not only the national GOP leadership that has been feeling alone and alienated as of late. The urge to strike out and say 'I am somebody' has afflicted Republicans in the state congresses just as deeply; perhaps even more so, to be perfectly honest, because all of the cameras that arrive to film their pain bear the insignia of local affiliates. Their cries are rarely heard beyond the state boundaries, and to be brutally honest about it, they are rarely heard even there unless it's a real slow news day. One can almost feel the pain of California's Abel Maldonado, seen as the single GOP vote which could make Governor Schwarzenegger package of tax hikes and spending cuts a reality, pulling the state back from the edge of the financial disaster that lurks ever nearer. "You can almost feel it, huh," mutters the embittered legislator. "Just like the Chargers almost made it to the Super Bowl, huh. Well, they're asking for almost $15 billion in tax increases, it just goes against what I believe in my heart and my values. And my deeply held need to seek vengeance." Maldonado hocks a loogie of bitterness onto the sidewalk of despair. Soon, there will be no one left to clean it up. He raises his voice in a feeble attempt at bravado. "There's nothing they can give me that would make me vote for this budget." It is odd, considering the GOPs zombie-like unity of recent days, to see this Republican senator abandoning the nation's second best known GOP governor - a man he mockingly calls Ah-null - but there is no love lost between these two Golden State titans. There was a long ago time, back in 2006, when Maldonado ran for state comptroller, and yet, inexplicably, Schwarzenegger did not campaign for him, causing Abel to spiral into defeat. His final words would seem to say it all. "Where was he when I needed him?" It was an easy question, one that we would have been only too happy to have answered for him, but his footsteps could already be heard echoing down the street, as he took a hard left on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and stepped aboard the soon to be unfunded trolley of relevance.