California, New Jersey Still Pivotal States — for Debt

California and New Jersey. These two states used to have their presidential primaries on the first Tuesday of June — the final primaries in a long, grueling process that began in the snowy cold of Iowa in January.

Depleted, exhausted candidates had to crisscross the nation for a week and advertise in the huge media markets of Los Angeles and New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

All of that is changed now. The presidential nominations generally are decided earlier, and these two states have moved “up” in the primary calendar.

But California and New Jersey still might influence and predict our political future. Here’s how:

For almost 40 years, California has been a "predictor" for trends that would sweep the nation soon. The grass-roots tax revolt of the 1970s began through referendums in California. It changed America. For the better.

It re-energized an almost-dead GOP and launched Ronald Reagan on his journey to the White House. In addition, it set the precedent that allowed the people to tell their politicians what to do — not the other way around.

However, since the mid-1990s, California’s trends have been negative: a massive influx of illegals from south of the border, coupled with a flight of middle-class workers and taxpayers to neighboring states (Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona). These trends, coupled with unrestrained government spending and debt in Sacramento, have brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy. They also have destroyed two successive governorships: Democrat Gray Davis and one-time GOP icon Arnold "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger.

These disturbing trends — massive government spending at a time when the tax base is declining thus causing huge debt — are what we are now seeing in D.C!

Is this the latest national trend California is predicting?

And if it is, what does this tell us about Obama, the Democrats, the GOP, and 2012?

On the other side of the nation, in the Garden State, we have another state government over-spending and over-taxing under a liberal Democratic stranglehold on the levers of power in Trenton. Gov. Jon Corzine is in deep, deep political trouble as he runs for re-election this year. His numbers are under 40 percent — terrible for an incumbent — and the GOP is re-energized after being out of power for 10 years.

Republicans have just nominated former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who, correctly, is trying to focus on economic issues instead of social issues in the otherwise liberal blue state.

Corzine is personally rich and now will set out to destroy Christie and try to paint him with a “he’s an out of the mainstream right wing nut” campaign.

If Christie can sidestep that pathetic diversionary tactic by a desperate Corzine, he can win in a solid Democratic state.

And if he does, will this concentrate-on-the-economic-issues-and-massive-government-overspending strategy become the new trend that sweeps the nation?

Let us hope and pray!