Political outreach: Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown
introduces Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a fundraiser
in October in San Francisco. (AP)
Posted on 01/05/2007 9:49:55 AM PST by calcowgirl
Willie Lewis Brown Jr., former "Ayatollah of the Assembly," ex-mayor of San Francisco, government consultant, fashion plate, lightning rod and — by his depiction — a living, breathing work of art, returns to center stage tonight in Sacramento.
Improbably.
No Democrat was more reviled by Republicans than Brown, who served a record 15 years as Assembly speaker before voter-imposed term limits — the "anti-Willie Brown law," he called it — chased him from the Capitol.
And yet tonight he will preside over Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's second inaugural fete, resplendent, no doubt, in a bespoke tuxedo and symbolizing the bipartisanship that made the event, and all its Hollywood dazzle, possible.
For all their superficial differences, the governor is a kindred spirit of the famously flamboyant Brown, a showman who loves to startle audiences and defy expectations. So maybe it shouldn't be all that surprising to see Brown surface amid the Schwarzenegger splendor, a dozen years after leaving the speakership. What better way to confound convention and underscore the governor's political outreach than to invite an old GOP nemesis like Brown into the tent — and, better yet, make him ceremonial ringmaster?
"It's good politics for Arnold, good business for Willie and entertaining for everyone else," said Republican strategist Dan Schnur, alluding to Brown's lucrative law practice and sassy wit.
It surely helped that Brown's preference was clear in last November's election. He openly mocked his party's gubernatorial nominee, the then-struggling Phil Angelides, and even featured Schwarzenegger at his annual San Francisco breakfast bash less than a month before the vote — touting the governor to a crowd of 1,000 or so Democratic loyalists.
(snip)
"It's hard to imagine Willie doing this for a Republican other than Arnold," said Rob Stutzman, a former advisor to Schwarzenegger.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Political outreach: Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown
introduces Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a fundraiser
in October in San Francisco. (AP)
Anyone seen FO lately?
Last I recall, the account was beginning the rally for universal healthcare (under an alternative label, of course).
I'm betting that her next mantra will be that this is all part of a greater plan to unseat Boxer. Those of us who criticize the leftward march of "California collectivism" will be accused of supporting Boxer. Any bets? Anyone? Anyone? Buhler?
Good one! Dare not criticize any of the leftist lurches as we will undermine our "only chance" of unseating Boxer. Opposing universal healthcare is a vote for Boxer. Opposing bloated budgets is a vote for Boxer. Opposing more borrowing is a vote for Boxer. Opposing more special-rights for gays is a vote for Boxer. ... etc.
I do believe you've nailed it, EGD!
Talk about a "Pair to Draw to!" The dynamic duo of pure political SHOWMANSHIP!!! (Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show On Earth)
Excerpts from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's inaugural address:
AP
http://www.dailycomet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070105/APN/701054315
"Every day has been an adventure. As a matter of fact, my escapes have been more hair-raising than anything I did in the movies."
---
"... The California historian Kevin Starr says that we must think of ourselves as belonging not just to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party but to the Party of California because California is a collective ideal worth preserving. The Party of California is beyond ideology and one to which all of us belong."
---
"Some pundits said that I won re-election because I co-opted the Democratic agenda. Some said that the Democratic Legislature, by working with me to increase the minimum wage or reform prescription drug costs, abandoned the Democratic nominee for governor. This is the kind of partisan thinking that frustrates the voters and diminishes our democracy. The people are disgusted with a mindset that would rather get nothing done than accomplish something through compromise."
---
"We don't need Republican roads or Democratic roads. We need roads. We don't need Republican health care or Democratic health care. We need health care. We don't need Republican clean air or Democratic clean air. We all breathe the same air."
---
"I believe we have the opportunity to move past partisanship ... to move past bipartisanship ... to post-partisanship. Post-partisanship is not simply Republicans and Democrats each bringing their proposals to the table and working out differences. Post-partisanship is Republicans and Democrats actively giving birth to new ideas together."
---
"Centrist does not mean weak. It does not mean watered down or warmed over. It means well-balanced and well-grounded. The American people are instinctively centrist, so should be our government."
"Consider the danger of global warming. Imagine your child is sick with a rising fever. If 98 out of 100 doctors said the child needed immediate treatment . . . and two doctors said the child was just fine . . . who would you listen to? The 98 or the 2? Should we do nothing about global warming on the slim-chance a few skeptics who deny its existence may be right? No, we should not. "
NEW & IMPROVED CALIFORNIA - AFTER RECALL ELECTION
Spend zillions for THE CHILDREN!!!! A billion here, a billion here, we'll borrow it and make it up later!! Free health care, social security, education, and abortions for all -- but guns for nobody! Government exists to provide programs for all the people!!!! Feel the love!!! All hail the welfare state! Willie, you da man!!!
"RECALL IS POINTLESS IF SCHWARZENEGGER IS ELECTED GOVERNOR"
-- Lou Sheldon, Californians for Moral Government, Sep. 13 2003
Hey gang... I watched a bunch of the ignogeral during the lunch hour. That woman they had singin was soundin just like Arnold the day he busted his differential on the slopes of ID!
She'd screech and then she'd wail and then she'd whoop and then she'd holler and then she'd warble... All the while she'd be contortin her face into all manner of wild-asped expressions of what looked like abject pain... So I figured is was a sympathetic reaction to Arnold bustin his hindquarter!!!
It certainly was NOT easy listenin!(See? I don't always use 3 exclamation marks!!!) I was gonna remember her name, but one tends to forget traumatic events that are distasteful, doesn't one???
That's right! It simply means there's no "there" there!!! It means it's nothin but a hollow core where the core conservatism should be you idiot!!!
Centrist = Stands for Nothing
Oh, but it's balanced! And it makes him look like the smartest Governator in the history of CA!!! Why, even smarter sounding that Earl Warren, or the other rottenest Republican meglomaniac in CA history... HIRAM JOHNSON!!!
Nah...it just reveals him to be what we already know he is...a political whore.
sw
And yet these days we hardly hear a peep out of Arnie's Amen Corner.
I think I beat ol' Lou by a day! lol.
"Winning" with Arnold is not "Winning" for the state, the people, or the party.
-- calcowgirl, 09/12/2003
New ones have arrived to nip at the heels.
"Arnie's Ankle Biters" should suffice to distinguish between the Amen Corner and the kennel.
Let the games begin...
I hope there are term limits in the Governor's office, or Arnie's bi-partisan love fest might inspire him to top Earl Warren's "achivement" of getting the GOP, Dems, and Progressive Party nominations all at once when he ran for a third term. At this rate, Arnie will pick up endorsements from the Greens, Socialist Equality, and Peace & Freedom Party by the time he's done with California.
CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR 1946
Earl Warren - Republican/Democrat/Progressive 91.6%
Henry R. Schmidt - Prohibition 7.1%
Feel that bi-partisan love! Vote for Republican Earl Warren or the Democrats Prohibitionists will win!
Yip! Yap! Yipe! Cripe!!! Here they come trippin over their own anatomy!!!
And conservatives hate immigrants and want to destroy the environment, dincha know?
The same ol' tactics, over and over.
Geeze!!! Talk about an up-hill battle!!! I've always wondered who Earl Warren was up against while securing the nomination of both Demos AND Repubs!!!
See? Now prohibition... THAT was unpopular!!! Much more so than Reagan style core conservatism!!! Thank you for catching the thrust of my reference to two of the previous most rotten Republican CA Governors in the history of the CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC!
Now we have a third!!!
Was it Jennifer Holliday? When she was 200 lbs heavier, she was the original star in Dream Girls (1982) which won a bunch of Tony awards (she was awesome). Kinda strange though... "Dream". Arnold mentioned in his speech "California historian Kevin Starr." Starr is the author of 9 books, 7 of which have "Dream" or "Dreams" in the title (see list below). How many other participants had some sort of "Dream" included in their resumes?
This "California Dream" and "Green Dream" thing is overdone. Maybe the whole decade of Schwarzenegger will become known as Arnie's Utopian Dream... or One Bad Dream.
Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915. (1973) ISBN 195016440 Land's End (a novel) (1979) ISBN 070608806 Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (1985) ISBN 195034899 Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (1990) ISBN 195044878 Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (1996) ISBN 195100808 The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (1997) ISBN 195100794 Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950 (2002) ISBN 195124375 Coast Of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2002 (2004) ISBN 679412883 California: A History (2005) ISBN 679642404
This will occur as he's being lifted off those steps by a rescue helicopter due to a massive flood that will have overtopped the Folsom Dam, flooded the Crapitol and is racing off into the sunset to destroy all the levees in the greater Bay Delta... ruining most of CA's drinking water supplies for two or three years.
Of course this could all have been avoided by finishing the dam at Auburn with a legitimate bond issue far smaller than the levee bond measure he got passed which won't do much on over a thousand miles of delta levees, anyway!!!
But, of course, he could never do this right thing as he accepted a free whitewater rafting trip down the never to be dammed south fork above Folsom, immediately after he was elected in the Recall. This gave the leftist EnvironMentalist rafting guides not only time in the eddy pools to amass undue influence for never finishing Auburn Dam, but for slapping a CONServancy over the eastern 1/5th of CA to stop all economic development except in the "Eco-Tourism industry," their industry of course!!!
I think there was even a thread about this rafting trip right here on FR IIRC.
PS Did you hear John Garamandate, our new Dem Lt. Governator say that Arnold's Inogural speech was "music to his ears?"
I missed that one, but it doesn't surprise me. Lockyer, Brown, and Garamendi's priorities that they talked about in those SF Chron debates sounded pretty much the same as Arnie. All calling for environmental justice and such. Kumbaya!
What's the hubbub, bub?
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