GraniteGrok

We saw how the House of Representatives grow their spines (almost overnight?  egads!) as en masse, they refused, to a man, to vote for the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Generational Theft Act.  Then, the Senate Republicans, except for the Triad of Specter, Snowe, and Collins, stood up and voted against that same bill believing (correctly!) that this was nothing more than:

• A bunch of spending that Dems have wanted to do for years
• Rewarding the irresponsible (states, companies,
  

• Stealth measures due to deliberate acts of discarding the regular (and needed) HEARINGS to implement:
• The failed AFDC welfare system payment system doing away with 20 years of welfare reform
  
• The beginnings of Universal Healthcare
• More seeds of undermining a Founding principle of Federalsim
• Quickly ensconcing Obama as the most Imperial President ever.

Standing up for conservative action items, they refused to go with the oink-oinks and perhaps would have suceeded in keeping only the stimulus items and getting rid of the pork if it weren't for the Triad.  The question was, and is, when would Republicans hold others accountable?

Well, we saw the first instance here as the Tennessee Republicans threw a turncoat Republican, Kent Williams, out of the Party for his deliberate malfeasance in abandoning his Party members to further his own career as Speaker.

Now, we have a second - this time in California.  Already we watched as Governator Ah-nold, who ran as a fiscal conservative and social moderate Republican has morphed into a Democrat-lite (or more) as he now is presiding over a worse budget deficit than when he first campaigned against Grey Davis. 

The Republicans in the California Assembly promised no more tax increases, so when they caught their Senate Minority Leader Dave Cogdill trying to cut a deal to "save" California (ahem, its unions over its taxpayers), they acted:

SACRAMENTO -- Republican state senators upset with tax increases in the budget proposal agreed to by Republican Sen. Dave Cogdill have voted to remove him as minority leader, Cogdill said early Wednesday.

The Senate's 15 Republican members voted to replace Cogdill with Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murietta.

The late-night coup could derail already strained budget talks by requiring Democrats and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to renegotiate with a new Republican leader.

Majority Leader Darrell Steinberg directed lawmakers to begin taking up the budget vote just before 1 a.m.

The Senate remained a single Republican vote short of passing a midyear budget fix in an attempt to stave off financial calamity for the state.

...New leader Hollingsworth had told Steinberg during a pointed floor exchange Monday that Republicans weren't going to let Democrats take from people's pocketbooks.

"I don't want to see a tax increase passed," Hollingsworth said Wednesday. "I think the majority of my caucus doesn't want to see a tax increase passed in the package. We'll see what happens in the next few hours, next few days."

Good for them - they refused to be played for fools once again by one of their own!  

In my humble opinion, the Republicans have a very tarnished image; much of it tarnished because of Republicans discarding CORE (not all, but CORE) Republican ideals and philosophy.  Less taxes is a part almost every Republican Platform  in the US(I would imagine - I haven't looked - but it is a good bet) as well as smaller government.

Senator Codgill was trying to increase taxes for a bloated government structure instead of sticking to principles and try to cut the size of his government.  Remember:

Government should be working for us and not us for the Government

as it often times seems to be the case.

Let's see if this becomes "catchy" - Republicans going back to, embracing, and sticking to CORE values.  And let's see if it also becomes "catchy" that the words "Accountability" and "Replacing" become tied together...