I ran into a friend in Sacramento Tuesday -- one of the many disappointed Republicans who inhabit the capital -- who told me that he will never again vote for a candidate for governor who has not lost an election. He had soured on the lack of humility invasive in state politics.

When I worked in the Capitol in 1987, the rap against Sacramento was that there were too many backroom and bar-napkin deals. The rap today is that there are no deals at all. Or -- as appears to be the case -- there are deals hammered out so late in the game that they inflict more pain than is necessary.

Why? Because too many politicians think they're too good to cut a good deal.

In past columns on Sacramento's sorry finances, I've hit the Dems, who as the majority party have spent California into oblivion, and the Republicans, who would not agree to tax increases when they would have been less painful than now. And I've hit the governator for not reducing spending early in his tenure, as promised.

As Sacramento is poised to act, let us not forget California voters, who demand that their politicians tell them only what they want to hear, and threaten to behead any elected official who deviates from that script.

Thank you, California voters. You send the most liberal Democrats and most conservative Republicans to Sacramento, and then you are indignant when the extremists cannot work together.

You recalled Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger because Davis raised the vehicle license fee. When Schwarzenegger proposed spending cuts, you abandoned him.

When Schwarzenegger put a spending limit measure on the 2005 ballot, you rejected it -- not because of the content of the measure, but because you were miffed he had called a special election.

You sure showed him, didn't you? Continued...