Pumping Iron Pyrite

Pumping Iron Pyrite

December 23, 2004

In response to an ESPN query about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s drug use, his spokesman, Rob Stutzman, said (about Schwarzenegger's steroid use), "If he knew then what we know now, he wouldn't have done it." In ten years, Schwarzenegger’s “spokesman” will be mouthing the same words for Arnold about Republican politics.

In fact, Schwarzenegger’s entire life has been an exercise of his mouth blabbering ahead of his brain...with his bloated ego always in the lead.

Schwarzenegger, whose father belonged to the Nazi party, was a strong supporter of former Secretary General of the United Nations and Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim. Waldheim, himself a former Nazi, was also distinguished by his name appearing on the Wehrmacht's "honor list" of those responsible for committing mass murder in the Kozara region of western Bosnia during World War II.

In 1986, Schwarzenegger was so certain of his convictions that he allowed his name to appear on Waldheim’s campaign posters. At his wedding to Maria Shriver in 1986, Arnold raised a glass to Waldheim and toasted the former Nazi. Today, Schwarzenegger has terminated any mention of his old pal Waldheim.

In his latest pronouncement from the Mount, Schwarzenegger wants the Republican Party to move "a little to the left". The kindergarten cop thinks that, “the Republican Party currently covers only the spectrum from the right wing to the middle and the Democratic Party covers the spectrum from the left to the middle.” By moving “a little to the left”, Arnold hopes that, “This would immediately give the party 5% more votes without it losing anything elsewhere." Of course Schwarzenegger doesn’t count losing your soul as “losing anything elsewhere”.

The major defect in Arnold’s analysis is his belief that “the Republican Party currently covers only the spectrum from the right wing to the middle....” A more accurate assessment would be that the Republican Party currently covers the spectrum of all that is normal in America. That is...unless you consider law-abiding taxpayers in heterosexual marriages who believe in the sanctity of family, country and life to be abnormal.

Where exactly would Schwarzenegger like the Republican Party to move “a little to the left”?

Perhaps Arnold believes that Republicans should abandon the sanctity of life and embrace “choice”. Or maybe the Republicans should slash the military budget and rely on France for our national security. Republicans might also entirely abandon Congress and cede all legislative decision making to the United Nations. Or perhaps civil unions for man, woman, child, sheep and Republican alike is the magic bullet. Then again, “moving a little to the left” might be Arnold-code for marrying a Kennedy.

If one had been paying closer attention to American history than to box-office revenues, one would easily have seen that this country has been “moving a little to the left” for the past 100 years. Teddy Roosevelt’s Trust Busting was not a rightward trend. And, FDR’s New Deal had nothing Right about it. LBJ’s Great Society was a homerun right over the leftfield wall. In the long-term, American government has been steadily inching to the left for over a century.

All Republican politics has accomplished is a retardation of the rate at which America moves to the left. It’s similar to the misnomer of “spending cuts” or “reduced government”. If anybody thinks that spending is ever cut or government is ever really reduced...show me a year in which there were fewer government employees than the previous year or a total federal budget smaller than the previous year’s. A great liberal code word is “reduction”. Reduction is only a colloquialism for a reduced rate of growth.

And speaking of colloquialisms...what is a “moderate” Republican...besides the pathetic caricature of Arlen Specter trading convictions (as wrongheaded as they may be) for self-survival? The term “moderate” should be banned from the Republican lexicon. It is another of those idiotic vulgarisms that doesn’t mean what it says. A “moderate” Republican is a mainstream liberal in a cheap elephant suit.

Republican versus Democrat should not become Chevy versus Ford. What good is market share (votes) if the outcome is indifferent? Vying for votes by giving away the farm is prostitution. Altering the beliefs of the Republican Party to co-opt a few votes transitions principle to greed. The object of that game leaves the best interests of the electorate mired in the dirty grease that lubricates the rape of the taxpayer and patriot alike. It’s a zero sum game...to give more you have to take more.

In his farewell to the Army, George Washington noted that God “would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that ... humility and pacific temper of mind...and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.” Obviously having never learned this lesson, Schwarzenegger has convinced himself that, “I brought bodybuilding from nothing, I made the action film a genre, and the same goes for politics....”

I guess he forgot, or vainly wishes to ignore, Eugen Sandow, Charles Atlas, Joe Wieder, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Thomas Jefferson, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Arnold should get his head out of the Hollywood clouds and try to put his feet back on the ground. An excessive exuberance for self is not the stuff from which leadership qualities, or Republican principles, is made. By advocating a move of the Republican Party “a little to the left”, Schwarzenegger is pumping fool’s gold. Killing the patient is not the cure.

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