Not content with his legacy of seriously damaging the Republican Party in California during his term in office, former Gov. Pete Wilson has weighed in on the Sacramento-area Tom McClintock vs. Doug Ose congressional primary. His unsurprising preference is for the candidate who would be most like his tax-raising, pro-abortion, anti-conservative, GOP-wrecking self: Doug Ose.

I lived in Sacramento and was deeply involved in GOP politics during the “Wilson years,” and as such think there are a couple of items Republican voters in the 4th Congressional district ought to take into account as they weigh the liberal Wilson’s endorsement of the liberal Ose.

* If Pete Wilson had gotten his way, Ronald Reagan would have never been in the White House. When Reagan ran for president, Wilson traveled to New Hampshire during the primary election to campaign against his home state governor. Spending days in the state bashing Reagan, Wilson informed GOP voters that Reagan had been “a mediocre governor,” was “too extreme” to get elected president and would “lead the GOP to disaster.” Wilson, of course, changed his tune once the Gipper got to the Oval Office, but when the chips were really down, Ronald Reagan couldn’t count on Pete Wilson. Reagan fans in the 4th District might want to remember this.

* Pete Wilson’s answer to tight budgetary times in Sacramento was to raise taxes on working families. In Wilson’s first year in office, he faced a budget seriously in deficit. In what is now a familiar scenario, legislative Democrats wanted to raise taxes while Republicans wanted to rein in government spending. Wilson answer was the one given by all knee-jerk budgetary liberals—raise taxes. He not only sided squarely with the liberal Democrat tax-raisers but also embarked on a jihad against conservative legislators brave enough to stand up to him and oppose increased taxes. He famously said, “Conservatives are f------ irrelevant.” Conservatives in the 4th District might want to remember this.

*Pete Wilson managed to ram his tax increases through the Democrat dominated legislature, but that wasn’t enough for him. Like a spoiled child, he set out to punish Republican legislators who opposed raising taxes by recruiting primary opponents to them and other “no new taxes” GOP candidates in the 1992 primaries. Millions of Republican dollars were wasted on needless primary battles, and opportunities to defeat Democrats in November were lost because of Wilson’s petulance. Republican loyalists in the 4th District might want to remember this.

*Pete Wilson’s tax-raising and wishy-washy liberalism nearly destroyed the Republican Party during his governorship. While he was the leader of the party, GOP representation in the assembly plunged from 41 members to 32. Wilson appointed the hapless John Seymour to his vacant U.S. Senate seat, based entirely on the fact that Seymour was one of the very few pro-abortion GOP legislators. There were many stronger candidates then Seymour, but none who passed Wilson’s pro-abortion litmus test. Seymour was a predictable disaster at the polls, receiving less then 38 percent of the vote against Dianne Feinstein, who at the time was damaged goods having lost the 1990 governor’s race to Wilson and was viewed by Democrats as being in danger of becoming a perennial candidate. Feinstein went on of course to become firmly entrenched, and the GOP is still paying the price for Wilson’s arrogance and pro-abortion extremism. Voters in the 4th District concerned about the hostile Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate that a President McCain could face might want to remember this.

*Pete Wilson’s rank opportunism made the victory of Proposition 187 a pyrrhic one, and started the alienation of conservative Latinos from the GOP.  Then-state Sen. Dick Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, was the man most responsible for getting 1994’s Proposition 187 on the ballot.  The proposition was meticulously written to deal strictly with illegal immigration only.  At first, Wilson would have nothing to do with 187; however, during the late summer, when it appeared his campaign was foundering, he used the leverage of his big money donors to elbow Mountjoy aside.  Wilson and his wise-guys, desperate for a wedge-issue to re-elect the governor, mangled the campaign so badly that a Latino backlash set in almost before the last vote was counted. The distinction between legal and illegal immigrants was lost, as that didn’t matter to the Wilson folks as long as Pete was re-elected.  The California Republican Party is still paying the price for Wilson’s inexcusable bungling of the pro-legal but anti-illegal message of 187.  Republicans in the 4th District concerned about the minority status of their party might want to remember this.

Is this really the best that Doug Ose can do? Pete Wilson’s antipathy toward Tom McClintock is understandable. McClintock is an articulate, principled conservative who believes in small government and low taxes—all mortal sins in Wilson’s eyes. But Ose has been trying to hide his actual record while in office and campaign as some sort of conservative. Perhaps he agrees with W.C. Fields that “you can fool some of the people some of the time, and that’s enough to make a decent living.”

However, thoughtful Republican voters in the 4th District ought to take a close look at the Ose campaign and their new attack dog, party wrecker Pete. It would be a fair question for them to ask themselves how much value they ought to give the endorsement of a Republican “leader” who tried very hard to keep Ronald Reagan out of the White House, whose answer to budget problems is to raise taxes and whose tenure as governor saw the California Republican Party nearly destroyed.

It seems to me that if I were a conservative Republican candidate trying to get the votes of conservative Republican primary voters, party wrecker Pete is the last guy I’d want on my side. But since all the actual conservative leaders have endorsed Tom McClintock, I guess Ose had to take whoever was left over.

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For a related story, visit: http://www.sacunion.com/pages/california/articles/9823/

William E. Saracino is a longtime political analyst and may be contacted at .