Posted on 07/12/2010 2:50:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES — If the mark of a real independent is lack of friends, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the quintessential nonpartisan in American politics right now.
His approval rating has not risen above 30 percent since May 2009. California remains in deep fiscal distress. He is despised by the state’s workers (whose pay he cut), Democrats (who loathe his aversion to new taxes and his desire to cut entitlements) and Republicans (who wish those respective aversions and desires were stronger), as well as college students, public school parents and people who hate the smell of cigars.
As Governor Schwarzenegger prepares to leave office in January, the lesson from his seven-year effort may be this: Being an independent can win you a lot of things: an election, even re-election, and new policies. But that’s not the same as having people like you.
...
His left-leaning proclivities on issues like the environment and health care were never enough to mollify the state’s liberals; among the state’s conservatives, his right-leaning views on pension reform and crime did not compensate for the taxes he once raised and the deals he cut with Democrats.
It is an experience others who claim independence know well: the candidate Barack Obama, who won plaudits for promising to work in the spirit of compromise, but is now taking a beating from both parties; ..
You can’t really please any of the people much of the time. “There were people all the way through, people who were disappointed,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said as he pulled on a cigar during a recent interview in his Santa Monica office. Some “who thought I should be more conservative, some who thought I should be more liberal. Some people thought I should be more dissenting.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
conservative, hardly.. in any way shape or form..
disappointed people? lots of ‘em.. lots
is that wails and lamentations of taxpayers I hear in the distance?
so long Gub.
Nice try,, but no cigar.
My heart bleeds—LOL!
Oh Boo Hoo. The guy is a freakin RINO.
Reformer? Is that what you call it? I can think of other words.
He did more to kill conservatism and bankrupt the state than anyone in the history of California, IMO.
He made a better Terminator than a governor.
I said in 2003 he’d be an epic fail disaster and he’s proven I wuz right.
But he delivered California for Bush!
(oh.... wait a minute...)
...and McCain and... *cough*
Gee whiz, how many times did I shoot down those bull$hit claims that Ah-nold would be like the magical Republican genie ? Where are all those lying asshat sycophants and paid bots now ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_YHsgLTZzk
The Arnold in this video faded away more and more as the years went on while in office...
Arnie has NO PRINCIPLES.
Arnie is in no man's land because of his arbitrary political ideology. Arnie deserves this. Perhaps he will force him to do some soul searching.
Yea, he sure did, didn’t he!
But he delivered California for Bush!
(oh.... wait a minute...)
I distictly remember Biblical Christinaity CHEERING everyone on to vote for Arnie. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe NOW, he “sees the light”?
I had addressed this to him but see he changed his moniker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_YHsgLTZzk
This is the Arnold many were hoping for...he may have still been there at the very start but then decided to go for political expediency shortly into his tenure in office.
If you try to be all things to all people you end up being nothing to everyone.
"Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape."
But I think Arnold did a little talking on the right side and more walking on the left.
Yes ... .
Pragmatism doesn’t work out well.
Standing on the RIGHT principles does work out well, eventually.
What real conservative would marry a Kennedy family member?
Good riddens Govenor. You have been terminated!
>In short, he was the very essence of that magical “moderate” Republicans that the Dems and liberal media tout incessantly.<
.
Another ‘Maverick’ like that senator from AZ that many in that state want to re-elect.
...he may have still been there at the very start ....
&&&
I doubt it. He has always been where the Kennedys wanted him to be.
I still want to rub it in to the people on this site that supported this idiot. The McClinock supporters were ridiculed because they said that a conservative couldn't win here. I now wish Davis would have stayed. Read my tagline for the past yrs.
Arnold - “Welcome to the Hotel California”.
They're pushing Mitt Romney's candidacy on the Romney threads now....
Their mantra: HE CAN WIN!!!
You should have heard John and Ken of kfi640.com mocking this article yesterday.
He came on KFI numberous times during his elections. Not so much when he veered left.
Amen. Ahnuld's positions on the issues differed little from Cruz Bustamante and he governed just like the DIABLO (Democrat In All But Label Only) that we predicted he'd be. Not ONE of the lofty predictions his cheerleaders on this board made (he'll deliver California to Bush, he'll get the budget under control, he'll end Democrat dominance of the General Assembly, etc.) came to pass.
I can think of precisely ONE instance where I was proud of Ahnuld as Governor -- the Tookie Williams execution where the Austrian socialists threatened to remove his name from their stadium and revoke his citizenship, and the Hollyweird crowd had a 24-7 candle vigil trying to turn the murderous Crips gang founding thug into a victim. Ahnuld called their bluff, told them all to F themselves, and nonchantly fried Tookie. But the fact of the matter is, Gray Davis was a pretty staunch death-penalty supporter and would have done the same thing. So despite Ahnold standing up to leftists for once in his life, there was no net gain in that circumstance either.
The problem with Ahnuld's supporters is they only cared about the short-term goal... what a morale victory it would be to "beat Gray Davis". You could have run ANYONE against Davis and they would have blindly voted for that person (and in hindsight Davis wasn't even as bad as Arnold!) The fact the candidate they rallied around to do so was fatally flawed was of little consequence to him. They just accepted Ahnold's scripted talking points about "Milton Friedman" and believed his conservative backers would sway a man wedded to the Kennedy klan. Bad mistake. Now we see the long term effects of a "Republican" doing the Democrats dirty work for them over two terms.
I do feel better when some of Ahnuld's formerly staunch supporters here have admitted they were wrong and now say they would have voted for Tom McClintock in hindsight. But will this lesson be learned in other races? I'm hopefully with Mark Kirk's latest (in a decade long record of treason) action, supporting Elega Kagan, will finally cause the GOP base to accept that Mark Kirk is NOT a Republican, he is just a swarmy socialist Democrat running as a Republican. Indeed, just like Arnold, Mark Kirk is to the LEFT of many card-carrying Chicago Democrat politicians. Imagine the damage he'll do after six years in office. Just like the California recall, within a few months of "Republican" Mark Kirk in power, we'll be wishing the worthless lame duck RAT Roland Burris was still in Obama's Senate seat.
Yeah, don’t have to sell me on a lot of that. I get a little sick and tired of all the rah-rah crap from a lot of folks when they say, “We gotta beat fill-in-the-blank” without considering that the person that beats Mr. or Mrs. Fill-in-the-blank may end up being worse in the long run for our cause. They only see the momentary “on paper” victory, but never the long term stuff, which is the most important. I called Ah-nold’s victory properly in 2003, that it was nothing but a Pyrrhic one. Ditto with the execrable Mark Kirk. If I’m really lucky, I might have a few (or maybe one) rah-rah’er come up to me long after the damage is done and lament to me, “Oh, you were right.” Whoopie. They shoulda listened ahead of time.
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