Republican State Sen. Abel Maldonado was chosen by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week to fill the  lieutenant governor's post vacated by Democrat John Garamendi.

Maldonado visited with The Times' editorial board before the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss the appointment and, more generally, his views of what ails the perennially crisis-mired California government.

The roughly half-hour-long conversation is divided up by topic into shorter audio segments below. The Times staffers questioning Maldonado are Robert Greene, Susan Brenneman and Dan Turner.

Click on a button to listen to Maldonado's remarks on:

Partisan gridlock and the open primary

Being lieutenant governor

Budget cuts and taxes

Moderates in the GOP

A state constitutional convention

Offshore drilling

His pick for the 2010 governor's race

Redistricting and the open primary

Why California voters are angry

Top of the morning, Opinion L.A. followers! I thought I'd start off the day by gathering a snapshot of our readers' feelings on Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," which comes out today.

Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both (my vote: I hope someone gives it to me for Christmas).

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Matthew Cavanaugh / EPA

So Californians may yet again endure the letdown of an electoral battle royal that never was. In 2002, it was supposed to be Riordan-Davis; in 2010, the "what if" may be Fiorina-Boxer. The outcome of a Boxer-DeVore match (the latter, as Weigel reports in his article, has expressed Obama birther sympathies) would seem a foregone conclusion. After all, when asked to choose between a far-from-the-mainstream partisan and an incumbent with limited legislative accomplishments, Californians in the past have sided with the bland over the bracing.

-- Paul Thornton

Left photo: U.S. Sen. Barabara Boxer. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency.
Right photo: GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. Credit: Michal Czerwonka / Getty Images.

The Times editorial board and columnist Tim Rutten both throw their support behind Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's choice of Charlie Beck to lead the Los Angeles Police Department. The board likes Beck's credentials as a reformer, but notes the work still to be done on that front. Rutten echoes that sentiment, and throws in a few more issues that matter to the City Council.

On a less sanguine note, Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that neoconservatives transformed the Republican Party into an interventionist, big-government operation with no conservative policy agenda. Them's fighting words! Good thing they came out of Crane's word processor and not, say, Rutten's.

And Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, laments the slow death of the California dream. No, not the one about having a house on the beach. That died a long time ago. He's referring to "the promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here":

Speaking of schools, the editorial board criticizes a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) that combines some common-sense reforms to the public system with ill-considered ones. And, although it agrees that colleges and universities could do a better job controlling costs, it defends the decision by some to pay top dollar for top-drawer presidents.

-- Jon Healey

Illustration: Ted Rall / For The Times

It's not clear what precipitated this convergence, but the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post all devoted space last weekend to op-eds ruminating on contemporary conservatism. For those who missed this odd confluence of punditry, here's a quick wrap-up.

In the LA Times last Friday, Ted Kennedy biographer Neal Gabler wrote that the conservative movement's ideological rigidity of late bears all the trappings of religion. An excerpt:

Read responses to Gabler's piece here and here.

Also on Friday, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that voters don't share with media and GOP elites the obsession over fringe-radio archetypes such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Although Brooks' piece explicitly targets GOP brass for giving too much weight to shock-jocks, I read his piece as a veiled defense of the common conservative voter. An excerpt:

Last up is conservative scholar Stephen F. Hayward, whose Op-Ed article in the Washington Post on Sunday seems to be an amalgam of the ideas expressed by Gabler and Brooks. Hayward writes that the conservative movement benefits from the provocative populists in its ranks, but in the past the Hannity- and Limbaugh-types were counterbalanced by such serious conservative intellectuals as Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr. Today, that balance tilts decisively toward the populists and needs an intellectual counterweight. He finds hope in (wait for it) Glenn Beck. An excerpt from Hayward:

Which view comes closest to yours: The politics-as-religion analysis offered by Gabler, or Brooks' claim that Republican shock-jocks receive too much attention from GOP and media brass? Can Glenn Beck save the Republican Party? Or is the conservative movement on the right track? Post your comments below.

Former Times staff writer Johanna Neuman polled Washington insiders for the cause of today's hyper-partisanship in the Capitol, and names the most-cited culprit: Newt Gingrich. The architect of the Republican takeover of Congress in the mid-1990s also changed the congressional calendar and urged Republican lawmakers to spend their weekends at home, not mingling with colleagues of both parties in D.C. as they'd done before.

Updated at 1:05 p.m.: Neuman will discuss her Op-Ed on the "Michael Smerconish Show" at 7 a.m. EDT Wednesday, in case you're up that early and want to listen online. Or if you're in Philadelphia.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg eulogizes the "godfather of neoconservatism" Irving Kristol, who died last week at 89 -- and who had a major impact on Goldberg's political thinking.

On the Editorial Page, The Times examines the much-delayed work of the blue-ribbon panel trying to reimagine California's tax structure, and wonders if it might be a little too innovative. Its business receipt tax might not stand up to legal scrutiny, and its attempts to decrease revenue volatility appear to come at the expense of the poor and middle class.

We also address the backfiring strategy of seven former CIA directors who sent a letter to President Obama urging him to abort a Justice Department inquiry into torture... er, enhanced interrogation techniques... by the CIA under the Bush administration. The directors seem not to have realized that they were asking the president to abandon his assurances that Atty. Gen. Eric Holder would put the law above loyalty to the White House. The unintended result: Obama was forced to renew his promise, the opposite of the outcome they wanted.

And on the tangled question of Net neutrality, we weigh in on the side of new FCC chief Julius Genachowski, who wants to develop new rules governing what Internet service providers can do with the data that travels through their networks. Without such rules, the major phone and Internet companies have too much power to quash innovation in the name of "managing congestion."

Cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

-- Dan Turner

The Opinion Manufacturing Division straddles the ideological divide today, offering red meat to both sides of the aisle. The Times editorial board blasts ACORN, the community organizers at the heart of conservative talk radio's favorite conspiracy theories, for failing to acknowledge and correct its serious internal problems in the wake of "devastating" hidden-camera exposes. And Op-Ed columnist Tim Rutten peers behind the newfound celebrity of Rep. Joe "You lie!" Wilson (R-S.C.) to find all sorts of fringe-group, umm, creativity. In particular, he examines the roots of the tea party movement and the intellectual underpinnings of the "10thers" -- anti-government conservatives who claim the 10th amendment gives state lawmakers authority to reject many acts of Congress and Supreme Court rulings.

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, David A. Lehrer, president of Los Angeles-based Community Advocates Inc., argues that anti-Semitic attacks are declining -- contrary to dire warnings from the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Similarly, Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection, contends that tragedies such as those involving Dae'von Bailey and Lars Sanchez -- two children killed despite the supervision their families were given by county child-welfare officials -- are the exception, not the norm:

Back among the editorials, the board urges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign AB 2, a bill by Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) to limit the ability of health insurers to cancel policies retroactively. And while it praises the announcement that the Irvine Co. would transfer 20,000 acres to Orange County for parks, it calls on the county to reveal more about how it will manage the windfall:

Photo: Police in Nevada gather evidence from an ACORN office in 2008 as part of an investigation into voter fraud. Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

-- Jon Healey

It has come to this: President Obama may not, in fact, support the troops.

First up, an excerpt from ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Facebook post in response to Obama's address to Congress Wednesday on healthcare reform:

Second up is Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who I believe is only half-joking when he says Palin comes from "the University of Real America":

Two of my favorite bloggers -- Jim Ceaser of the University of Virginia, and Sarah Palin of the University of Real America -- were particuarly [sic] struck by one line in President Obama’s speech last night. As was I.

This is it: "Now, add it all up and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years, less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars....”

What’s the implication? Apparently, that we shouldn’t have spent so much on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fair enough, perhaps, with respect to the war in Iraq, which Obama opposed. On the other hand, Obama has supported the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, he’s criticized the Bush administration for under-resourcing that effort. ...

For the president, in a formal address to Congress, to suggest even in passing that these struggles are merely distasteful burdens rather than worthwhile missions, is appalling. Sarah Palin is right: Obama’s “offhand applause line” was an insult to those who have fought and sacrificed, and to those who are now fighting and sacrificing, on our behalf.

The Plum Line's Greg Sargent has already discussed the tackiness of Palin using 9/11 to launch a political attack on Obama (much of her post, by the way, pushed her renewed death-panel argument, which Times editorial writer Jon Healey neatly debunked). Also note that Palin offers her interpretation of what Obama meant without bothering to quote him. By that same token, Kristol all but brands our president unpatriotic using a conveniently truncated Obama's remark as evidence. If editorializing were only so simple.

Here's what Obama said, complete sentence and all:

Here's my reading, and it doesn't involve a troop-hating president who has not "internalized the fact that he is now commander-in-chief," as Kristol says: The president was calling out as hypocrites Republicans who voted for President Bush's expensive tax cuts and supported two expensive (and off-budget) wars, but who now use deficits and excessive government spending to argue against healthcare reform.

Obama could have further argued that extending healthcare coverage to all Americans is a more worthwhile endeavor than dispatching hundreds of thousands of American troops to another hemisphere to fight two wars. But Obama didn't say that, and he certainly didn't go far enough for Kristol and Palin to accuse a sitting American president of disrespecting the memory of those who died fighting wars on our behalf. 

A disclaimer: I haven't made up my mind on Obama's proposed healthcare reform plan, especially in light of Medicare's impending insolvency and Washington's overall crushing debt burden. Infusing the debate with mindless death-panel claims and accusations that the president has a hard time supporting our troops only pushes me (and, I suppose, other fence-sitters) to the pro-reform camp, if only to see the likes of Kristol and Palin saunter home in defeat.

-- Paul Thornton

Top photo: AP Photo / Al Grillo; bottom photo: Alicia Wagner / Los Angeles Times

GOP Chairman Michael Steele was for Medicare before he was against it, which was before he couldn't give an answer to the question of whether he was for or against it. In other words, the leader of a major political party is confused about his position on a massive government program that consumes more than one-fifth of total federal budget and has been around since the Vietnam War.

The question that comes up is how this guy ever managed to become the leader of a political party. Having looked through our archives for coverage of Steele's selection earlier this year as GOP chairman, it's apparent that he wasn't a very inspired pick by Republicans. Here's an excerpt from a Times news article published on Jan. 31, the day after his election:

What Steele needed to do was shore up party support. Instead, he engaged in a useless public turf war with Limbaugh for which he later apologized. In a preview of his current indecisiveness over bread-and-butter issues for Republicans, he suggested that abortion is an individual choice. And after promising to make the GOP available to "every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community," he threatened to withhold party funds from moderate Republicans who voted for President Obama's stimulus package.

So now we're on to healthcare reform, and enormously complex field of public policy. Republicans, don't say you didn't see this train wreck coming.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: Steele speaks at the annual Indiana GOP state dinner in Indianapolis July 8. Credit: AP Photo / Tom Strickland.