No one of any Dem stature ever said anything when a police officer union member identified Republican DeMaio on his blog with a pink signifier. No Dem insider ever said anything publicly about Bob Filner’s repulsive attempts throughout the 2012 mayoral campaign to remind voters that “hey, Carl’s gay!” Or to repudiate recent DUI arrestee Ben Hueso’s X-rated, unsubstantiated allegations about what DeMaio purportedly did in the bathrooms of City Hall.

Tolerance is not required when it doesn’t suit Democrats or their de facto media allies, even those most likely to moralize about bigotry. Instead, 1940s-style sniggering about sexuality is fine when the target is a Republican. Shades of the way Democrats shrug off Harry Reid’s and others’ racially charged criticism of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ intelligence, even though legal blogs across the spectrum consider him a better writer and a more interesting legal mind than most of his colleagues.

Now San Diego machine Democrats — and Democrats in East Coast Super PACs flooding San Diego’s airwaves with hit ads — will have to decide whether to use outrageous new allegations against DeMaio. As a sign of how important the national parties consider the 52nd Congressional District race pitting DeMaio and first-term incumbent Scott Peters, Politico covered the scandal as it broke:

A high-profile Southern California congressional race descended into chaos on Wednesday when Republican Carl DeMaio was peppered with questions from reporters about whether he had sexually harassed and then intimidated and attempted to bribe a former campaign staffer.

At a news conference at his campaign headquarters, DeMaio called the allegations “absolutely untrue” and a “complete lie.” He added that authorities had questioned him and his campaign staff about the harassment claims, concluded they were unfounded and closed the case. DeMaio, 40, said the accuser concocted the story after he was identified as a “prime suspect” in a break-in at DeMaio’s campaign office last spring.

“All the evidence that was collected by the police department clearly indicated this individual was the prime suspect, and, it’s unfortunate, but we will continue to allow the district attorney to proceed with her case and weighing the case to prosecute for the break-in of our office,” said DeMaio, a former San Diego city councilman trying to unseat Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) in one of the nation’s most competitive House races.

What I’m hearing as a San Diego journo is that DeMaio is on solid ground in denying everything. That appears to be what Peters believes as well. He didn’t bring up the allegations at a Thursday debate.

But, hey, it’s been reported on. I expect the attack ads by Friday afternoon at the latest.

Democrats can’t wait to insinuate a gay Republican is a reprobate.

“The Tuesday special election in San Diego, triggered by the resignation of Democratic Mayor Bob Filner, caps a tumultuous stretch in the seaside defense-contracting-and-tourism hub that was once a stronghold of California Republicanism. Rocked in the past few years by a public-pensions meltdown that drove one mayor from office and again last year by Filner’s lurid sexual harassment scandal, San Diego politics is now buffeted by a different kind of force: overwhelming outside spending.

“At a moment in politics when Democrats are usually the ones complaining about heavy-handed electioneering from powerfully funded groups on the right, the race in San Diego is a vivid counterpoint — an illustration of the shock-and-awe impact national liberal groups can have when they engage outside federal elections.

“By the end of January, Washington-based labor unions had donated more than $1.2 million to outside groups supporting Democrat David Alvarez, a 33-year-old freshman city councilman who would be San Diego’s first Hispanic mayor. The $1.2 million figure matches the entire independent expenditure budget for GOP outside groups in the race … .”

“Faulconer has far outdistanced Alvarez in fundraising for his campaign account, taking in nearly $2.2 million to the Democrat’s $734,000. But union-backed independent expenditure groups have spent more than both those figures combined: the most imposing organization, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME-backed Working Families for a Better San Diego, has raised about $3.6 million to boost Alvarez.”

Among young, GOP woes go far beyond being outspent

So why hasn’t the national Republican Party jumped in to try to give the GOP its only big-city mayor? Because it might do more harm than good.

“In the face of heavy spending from the labor-backed Democratic coalition, there has been minimal national conservative engagement in the race. In part, that’s a matter of necessity: the national GOP brand could be toxic for Faulconer in a diverse, increasingly liberal-leaning city. A Republican National Committee official said that there’s field staff on the ground for the 2014 cycle, but there’s not a comparable financial investment from GOP-oriented groups. …

“To veterans of San Diego politics, the city’s leftward drift is a striking case study in what heavy-duty partisan investment can do in lower-profile elections — and a testament to the GOP’s desperate straits with the young people, minority voters and cultural liberals who are heavily represented in big cities.”

That last point can’t be made enough. It reminds me of the 2004 debate between Thomas Frank and George Will, but in reverse.

That was the year Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” came out. Its premise was that social conservatives were so manipulated by hot-button Republican campaign tactics that they voted against their own economic interests.

On TV and in print, Will responded by questioning the notion that Democrats would bring more prosperity to the average Kansan than Republicans. But he also made the point that in a post-Cold War era, the stakes in voting were much less grave, and that people who were doing OK economically might not vote their pocketbooks:

“Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the content of popular culture, the agendas of public education and the prevalence of abortion.

“So, what’s the matter with Kansas? Not much, other than it is has not measured up — down, actually — to the left’s hope for a more materialistic politics.”

The Dems who don’t vote their pocketbooks

Now, a decade later, we have the opposite phenomenon in California. An overwhelming case can be made that Democratic hegemony has been bad for the average Californian since 1999, and that poverty and unemployment would be reduced if there wasn’t such Dem opposition to helping the private sector prosper. But among the majority of Democratic voters who have jobs, their relative personal success inoculates them from this GOP argument. And GOPers have no counter to undo the perceptions about their party, especially among the young.

To paraphrase Will:

Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the expansion of gay rights, the availability of contraception and abortion, and the concerns of environmentalists.

The younger cohort of such people may be lost to Republicans forever, even if they register independent — unless the GOP figures out a new tune, and soon.

As for San Diego, I still think Faulconer squeaks through to victory in the special election despite the influx of outside union cash. But when he’s up for re-election in 2016 after completing what’s left of Filner’s term, watch out. The demographics of general elections don’t bode well for Republicans in San Diego — and just about everywhere else in California.

First example: It was completely predictable that allowing companies to not provide health insurance to employees who worked less than 30 hours a week would lead companies to broadly shift to part-time employment. In any industry in which advanced or even moderate job skills aren’t necessary — in which employee turnover is no big deal — it makes far more financial sense to have 80 workers at 25 hours a week than 50 workers at 40 hours a week. None of the 80 workers would have employer-paid health insurance in the former scenario; in the latter, 50 would. Duh.

The result, per NBC News, is stunning: the Labor Department says 97 percent of the jobs created in the U.S. over the last six months were for part-time work. The disincentive to provide full-time jobs is so huge that the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers and other labor union leaders recently wrote in a letter to the White House that it was a threat to “destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that is the backbone of the middle class.”

Obama expects ‘enormous success’ in Golden State

Now we see another example of a simple lack of common sense with more than a touch of delusion. This is from a Politico story about Obamacare’s implementation and how it’s been resisted by some states and embraced by others:

“[T]he political mood is very different in the states that are trying to implement it, [an administration] official said, and there will be ‘enormous successes’ in the states that give the law a genuine effort — ‘and there will be many of those,’ citing California, Maryland, New York and Nevada.”

Yeah, sure, Californians are going to love Obamacare. Avik Roy of Forbes’ number-crunching shows how hard-hit one economically vulnerable group is going to be:

“If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (That’s the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)

“The next cheapest plan, the ‘bronze’ comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com, the average cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92. In other words, for the average 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.

“Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261. But on eHealthInsurance, the average cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.

“For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double.”

A $2,000 deductible? That will be embraced? Really?

Oh, this is just going to be HUGELY popular.

Wait — there’s more. Under California’s Silver Obamacare option, which officials expect to be one of the most used, the annual deductible is $2,000.

So young, healthy Californians who average a trip or two or three a year to the doctor will have to cover all the costs — and also pay premiums that are way higher than they used to have to pay.

They are just going to LOVE the Affordable Care Act.

No, they’re not. Duh.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO -– Don’t you hate it when life starts to resemble one of those bleak, futuristic dystopian movies? I’m thinking of an almost unfathomable reality –- local and state governments are joining the feds in buying unmanned aerial vehicles -– drones -– to patrol the skies.

Many uses for drones are innocent enough, such as for scientific endeavors and search-and-rescue missions, but many cities are grabbing Department of Homeland Security grants to buy these devices as part of their ongoing law-enforcement efforts. Agencies want to use them to, for example, monitor the border, search for drug dealers, hunt alleged criminals and target alleged terrorists.

Records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found scores of applications from local governments for drone permits, as well as widespread patrolling of U.S. skies by military officials. We’re familiar with conspiracy theorists, who warned of “black helicopters” and a military takeover of our society. But these drones are far more advanced than helicopters -– and thousands of them might be quietly circling overhead within a few years.

The ramifications of our drone-ization

This brings to mind images of that cheesy 1987 movie, “Robocop,” in which a cyborg police officer battles thugs. These days, crime rates are at nearly historic lows, and we’re as likely to die from a meteor strike than a terrorist attack. Yet, Americans seem insufficiently concerned about the ramifications of the drone-ization of society.

Again, some uses for drones are benign -– but their widespread use by government raises serious questions.

There are some practical concerns. For instance, a Washington Post article from November found that poorly trained military contractors were making repeated blunders in operating these aircraft, leading to multiple crashes at busy airports. In other words, this video-game-like process is leading to real-world dangers.

But the biggest fear involves our freedoms. We should be able to live our lives without being constantly monitored by the authorities – unless the authorities have a specific, court-endorsed reason for the intrusion.

The Bill of Rights puts strong emphasis on due legal process and on protecting citizens from unwarranted search and seizure because those are among the cornerstones of a free society. The New York Times found that drone operators at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico practice their skills by tracking and spying on the occupants of civilian cars driving near the base, which is a small reminder that there is always the temptation for government to abuse its powers.

There are so many laws and regulations on the books that Americans are rightly worried about how closely the government should watch us.

The filibuster that created a national debate

Rand Paul’s 13-hour Senate filibuster, his way of demanding that the president detail his policy on killing Americans via drone strikes on U.S. soil, succeeded on several counts. The administration ultimately did respond.

The marathon of talking, which delayed the confirmation vote on a new CIA director, pushed the drone issue onto the national agenda. And it assembled the beginnings of a political coalition that defies typical partisan boundaries.

Left-leaning news site Politico saw Paul’s concern as part of an “increasingly hysterical strain of conservative thought.” MSNBC’s typically liberal viewers supported the “targeted killing of Americans” by 78 percent to 22 percent in an online poll.

On the right, Sen. John McCain mocked Paul, his fellow Republican senator, as “wacko.” The hawkish Wall Street Journal labeled Paul’s speech a rant and then lectured him: “The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an ‘enemy combatant’ anywhere at any time, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant.”

The Journal’s editorial writers are missing something that Paul’s supporters seem to understand: If government officials are left to determine an “enemy combatant,” they will tend to draw that distinction as broadly as possible.

Then, there is the collateral damage. “[A] new study from researchers at NYU and Stanford concludes that as many 881 civilians -– including 176 children -– have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in northern Pakistan since 2004,” said Reason magazine’s Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie. It’s naive to think that domestic uses will always be handled without problem.

Just how much do you trust your government?

The new dividing line is the same as the old one: It’s between those Americans who, in the spirit of our founders, recognize that our own government can become a serious threat to our liberties, and those who are so trusting of government that they are willing to give it nearly unlimited powers to “protect” us.

Hence, we’re seeing coalitions of Democrats and Republicans pushing limits on states’ use of drones, just as we’re seeing coalitions of Democrats and Republicans criticizing those of us fearful about the militarization of society. In California, for instance, a bipartisan bill (Assembly Bill 1327) would place some modest limits on drone use by local agencies.

That’s a welcome sign that there might be some pushback on this disturbing mix of government power and high technology. We better push back hard and fast –- before our society more closely resembles some dark, futuristic Hollywood scenario.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By Chris Reed

Politico reporter Talia Buford had a weekend analysis piece about the environmental movement’s theories on why its sweeping proposals haven’t advanced in Washington. The main thesis:

“The green movement dreams of pushing major bills through Congress on the scale of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law and the immigration overhaul expected to begin next year.

“But those issues enjoy something the green movement does not: wide and deep support across key Democratic groups, including Latinos and African-Americans. …

“The greens say their plight is less dire than the GOP’s, insisting that diversity exists in environmentalism, especially at the local level. It’s nationally that environmental organizations — and the face they present to the country — too often drive the perception that green issues are the purview of white liberals.”

Politico deserves credit for noting the fact that leaders of major U.S. environmental groups are whiter than a New Hampshire country club, reflecting their elitist values and wealth. But Buford doesn’t bring up any of the many other obvious factors on why greens and minorities aren’t bosom buddies. The short list: