That someone is Peter Schrag in yesterday's LA Times, calling the Yacht Party California's Kamikazes - a party in terminal decline in the state but determined to take everyone else down with them:

In a state where whites have been just another minority for the better part of a decade, and where Latinos will in another generation be an absolute majority, it may not be surprising that that GOP narrowness leads to a gritty sense of besiegement and a kamikaze mentality that seems ready to take itself over the cliff, and the rest of the state with it....

But in the current crisis, the Democrats have in fact agreed to major cuts; the Republicans remain adamant on revenue. That resistance, as most people must know by now, is made possible by California's nearly unique constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds majority in the Legislature to enact a budget or increase taxes. If five Republicans -- two in the state Senate, three in the Assembly, both of which have Democratic majorities -- broke ranks, there'd be no gridlock.

But that's only part of the story. In a survey last year by the Public Policy Institute of California, 52% of the state's Democrats identified themselves as liberals, 31% as "middle of the road" and 17% as conservative.

Republicans were far more rigidly conservative: 67% called themselves conservative, 21% called themselves middle of the road and 8% said they were liberal.

So Democrats are not quite as hard-line as the folklore suggests.

One wonders if the LA Times editorial board read Schrag's column closely. Schrag is making excellent points, and hopefully the rest of the state's media will listen and stop lying to their readers that the problem in Sacramento is that legislators won't negotiate - that instead the Yacht Party is determined to claw back some political relevance at the cost of the state's viability.

The Republicans in California are the equivalent of a failed state. The party hasn't been viable on a statewide basis since 1996. 2002 and 2003 saw some momentary gains but those faded, and the only Republican with meaningful statewide success - Arnold - has made distancing himself from his own party a key to his electoral victories. So they exploit the 2/3 rule to maintain a semblance of power and arrest their slide into irrelevance - the Libertarian Party with a few more votes and some actual seats.

Schrag recognizes that the only way this death cult's death grip on the state will be ended is by eliminating the 2/3 rule:

The fastest way to restore responsibility all around is to rejoin the rest of the democratic world and bring back straight majority votes to enact budgets and raise taxes. That would break up the GOP cult, make both parties more responsible to the voters as a whole, force them to make the tough choices and take the heat for the consequences, and -- most important -- get on with the business of governing.

This is an eminently sensible conclusion. It's a shame it's taken weeks, if not months, for the LA Times op-ed page to start making sense on this, but they couldn't hide from reality any longer. The Yacht Party are now the Kamikaze Party, determined to sink the ship of state out of spite and desperation.