Posted on 12/11/2005 11:51:24 PM PST by goldstategop
The past few weeks have been a wakeup call to those Republicans, and especially those conservatives, who got stars in their eyes and supported movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor during the historic Gray Davis recall campaign.
On the heels of a decisive defeat in the recent special election for his reform ballot initiatives, the Terminator is acting like he wants to terminate his alliance with the Republican Party.
Since he has failed to even slow the nonstop spending of the California Legislature, Arnold's false reading of the election-results tea leaves has now led him to join the Democrat Party in pushing for tax-and-spend policies.
The news media is full of stories about the governor working on a $25 billion bond measure for infrastructure. Wait, no, it is $50 billion. Well, maybe it will be really big – the way Arnold likes things – could it be $100 billion?
Who knows?
The governor isn't saying yet, nor is he saying how the state can finance such largess. Talk amongst politicos in the state is that some sort of a tax increase is coming, courtesy of a Republican governor.
Most shocking to conservatives has been his recent personnel moves and the conduct of some of the governor's staff – who seem to relish the role of antagonists to any and all conservative or Republican causes.
Schwarzenegger recently announced his new chief of staff would be Susan Kennedy, one of recalled Democrat Gov. Gray Davis' top deputies. Not only did Kennedy head up the California Abortion Rights Action League, but she previously served as the executive director of the California Democrat Party.
Kennedy admits that she has never voted for a Republican in her life!
And this comes on the heels of Schwarzenegger's hiring of Daniel Zingale as chief of staff to the first lady and principal adviser to the governor. Zingale is another former top aide to the recalled-Gov. Davis, and he has a long record of extremely liberal political activism.
These stalwart Democrat leftists are going to be a further influence on a man who already was viewed as a liberal Republican to be, well, more liberal and less Republican.
If there was any doubt about what this means for Republicans and conservatives, just consider the recent conduct of Schwarzenegger Cabinet Secretary Terry Tamminen.
Earlier this week, Tamminen joined former Democrat Vice President Al Gore at an invite-only event at Stanford University. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Schwarzenegger's man began his comments to the crowd with a list of "The top five things President Bush says he will do to address global warming."
Tamminen lead the audience by asking if they knew the No. 1 thing Bush would do to end global warming.
The answer? "Wait two years. President Al Gore will fix it."
This is how bad things have gotten for the GOP in Califonia.
What's perhaps the saddest aspect to this saga is that it isn't so much that Schwarzenegger has betrayed us – Republicans knew he did not have any great loyalty to our party, our ideals or our beliefs.
But, the real betrayal is by those Republican Party leaders and so-called conservatives who were tripping over one another to jump on the Schwarzenegger bandwagon.
It was back in January 2003 that then-California Republican Party Chairman, Shawn Steel and I first discussed the waging of a recall campaign against California's corrupt and failed Democrat Gov. Gray Davis. We were live and on the air on the show I co-host on KSFO radio in San Francisco.
The people of California had had enough of the corruption, the overspending, the deceitful cronies in the Davis administration, and they wanted change – real change.
Within days of my on-air discussions, former Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian had launched the Recall Gray Davis Committee and we were on the way to making history.
There was only one problem.
We needed someone to take over the governor's seat once Davis was recalled.
Republican State Sen. Tom McClintock emerged as the frontrunner, with high favorability ratings from two statewide campaigns.
The only problem was that McClintock wasn't acceptable to the Republican elite in this state, because he was a conservative.
So, Republicans did the unthinkable and knifed McClintock in the back. The entire Republican Party establishment rallied around the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger (who announced his campaign in true Hollywood fashion on the "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno).
Even many conservatives sold out McClintock, so eager they were to ingratiate themselves to Schwarzenegger and his Kennedy wife, Maria Shriver.
And now we are all paying the price for those conservatives and Republicans who betrayed their principles and decided to play "groupie" to a washed-up Hollywood actor instead of being the grownups that were desperately needed to help turn this state around.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Whaddya mean "we"? I voted for McClintock.
Like I've said for years: Never send a RINO to do a man's job.
During the California recall election, when my then-WND colleague Hugh Hewitt was in the forefront of leading a merry band of Republican optimists to reject Tom McClintock – a genuine conservative – in favor of a man much esteemed by the Kennedy family, I wrote a column titled "Satanic Schwarzeneggerians," in which I encouraged eschewing the sacrifice of principle in favor of the "pragmatic" pursuit of power.
Now, I quite like Arnold as an action hero, and would consider it an honor to lift weights with the legendary body builder. But there are decent and even delightful individuals in every party across the political spectrum and personality is no sign of worthiness to hold political office. I have known and liked a number of individuals who would nevertheless be of more benefit to humanity dead than in power.
The idea behind the Schwarzenegger gubernatorial candidacy was that his popularity and sheer manly presence would cause the Democrat-controlled legislature to genuflect in humble awe before him, thus allowing the state Republicans to return California to some semblance of fiscal and operational sanity. The subsequent prosperity would naturally lead to a revival of Republican fortunes in the state, repeating in miniature what the Reagan revolution wrought on a national scale beginning in 1980.
The backup plan, in the event that the state Democratic leadership proved more recalcitrant than expected, was that the Great Man would simply bypass the Assembly and Senate and go over their heads in an appeal to the people of California. This was a reasonable idea, as California's system allows for a limited form of direct democracy through referendums, and indeed, this backup plan was put into effect earlier this year.
Unfortunately for California's Republicans, Gov. Schwarzenegger went zero for four in the November elections. And even more ominously, the governor is showing that he has no interest in sacrificing his political career at the behest of the conservative movement or the Republican Party, two things toward which the strength of the strong man's loyalty has always been dubious. His recent appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy, a liberal lesbian enforcer and former executive director of the California Democratic Party, as his new chief of staff, is a strong indication of his intention to tack left for the remainder of his term – look for a major compromise initiative supported by the government unions and state Democrats designed to jump-start his popularity in the run-up to the next election.
Even more disquieting are rumors that Schwarzenegger may opt to wash the political detritus of the last two years from his record with a shrewdly tactical announcement of a newfound political independence. Doing so would allow him to free himself of any blame for his recent failures, tossing it aside along with the Republican Party.
This would be a masterstroke, as the Los Angeles Times and other Democrat-leaning media would spare no effort in selling Schwarzenegger's version of events to saddle California Republicans with the political liabilities successfully sloughed off by the governor, while they are still reeling in disarray from the loss of their so-called leader.
In Schwarzenegger's action movies, he often left his opponents bloodied and burned. It is not difficult to imagine that California Republicans will soon be wondering if Arnold is handling them the same way.
As I am neither Californian nor Republican, this scenario troubles me not. And since Republicans have been chasing the myth of the electable moderate for most of my adult life, it wouldn't surprise me either, although I do marvel at those who managed to forget the Machiavellian history of elected Austrian imports. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts and Austrians running for office. In conclusion, I offer the following words, written in September 2003 – I see no need to revise them now:
"Schwarzenegger, far from representing the salvation of California's Republican Party, stands for its complete immolation ... Pragmatism in politics is self-defeating in the long run. It is a euphemism for the slow sacrifice of one's principles. The constant substitution of "electable" moderates for principled conservatives is what repeatedly kills the Republican Party and prevents it from ever realizing even a small part of its platform when it is in power."
Touche!
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Cool. One of the best ever from Sacred Cow Burgers.
Look where staying home during last month's election got the die-hard conservatives.
I didn't think Arnold would be any good when he ran, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I even liked some things he has tried to do, but he never failed to revert to form. So as a Texan, I feel your pain.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I was pulling for McClintock from Day One.
Frankly, I was floored by the amount of support Schwarzenegger got here at Free Republic.
Thanks. It was originally done October 5th, 2003. It was obvious to all who wasn't blinded by Schwarzenegger's celebrity that he was nothing more than a Liberal with an "R" by his name.
And now these same senseless dopes are claiming that (R)nold only turned Liberal because we conservatives wouldn't drink their liberal Kool-Aid.
Laugh? I thought I'd die.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
It was only because of his celebrity status. I had idiots here tell me with a straight face that (R)nold couldn't possibly be anti-gun because, "like, he's been in so many movies that had guns in them, like, y'know!"
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
What rot. (R)nold was showing his Liberal stripe long before that doomed "special election" crap. Hell, if anyone's to blame for the outcome of the latest debacle, it's (R)nold for thinking that his celebrity status was some kind of political teflon against the unrelenting (and unanswered) attacks by the unions.
Arnold's been pushing nothing but more borrowing, more gun-control, and bigger government from day one of his administration. Hell, the man didn't even have the stones to back the Parental Notification proposition! And you think conservatives are at fault for his being a Kennedy Liberal? Get a freaking clue.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Yep. A myth.
"Schwarzenegger, far from representing the salvation of California's Republican Party, stands for its complete immolation ... Pragmatism in politics is self-defeating in the long run. It is a euphemism for the slow sacrifice of one's principles. The constant substitution of "electable" moderates for principled conservatives is what repeatedly kills the Republican Party and prevents it from ever realizing even a small part of its platform when it is in power."
Perfect!! (Deserved repeating.)
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