Posted on 11/11/2005 8:50:02 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Arnold Schwarzenegger, having squandered a unique opportunity to restore effective governance to a fast-growing, fast-changing state desperately in need of engaged and responsive policymaking, surrendered to the status quo Thursday.
Emerging from a meeting with legislative leaders, Schwarzenegger ate humble pie for this week's special election in which all four of his "year of reform" ballot measures were rejected by voters. "If I would do another 'Terminator' movie, I would have Terminator travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have a special election," Schwarzenegger told reporters.
The Republican governor has every reason to be contrite - not because he was wrong to challenge the status quo, but because he did it so incompetently. His measures were poorly drafted and even more poorly presented to voters, allowing his enemies to bury them and his public standing in an avalanche of misleading television ads.
But Schwarzenegger went beyond contrition Thursday, virtually placing himself and his 2006 re-election hopes at the mercy of a gridlocked Legislature he once vowed to make functional. He's shifting back to the mode that marked the first eight months of his governorship, in which he repeatedly catered to lawmakers' demands in hopes that they would cooperate on his larger agenda. But it didn't work when he had a 65 percent public approval rating. It's even less likely to work now.
The narrow rejection of this week's most overtly ideological ballot measure - the one requiring parents to be notified when minor girls seek abortions - demonstrates that California politics are being driven, perhaps into the ground, by two antagonistic sociopolitical cultures.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
...a manz gotsta know his limitations
Doogle
HEY AH-NOLD- YOU ARE LOSING CONTROL- SO JUST GRIT YOUR TEETH AND GO FOR THE GUSTO- CALL FR 50% REDUCTION IN GOVT SIZXE (and also 50% reduction in taxes)
and wathc your poll numbers climb
First sentence needs correcting:
California, having squandered a unique opportunity to restore effective governance to a fast-growing, fast-changing state desperately in need of engaged and responsive policymaking, drank large doses of leftist poison Thursday.
"The narrow rejection of this week's most overtly ideological ballot measure - the one requiring parents to be notified when minor girls seek abortions - demonstrates that California politics are being driven, perhaps into the ground, by two antagonistic sociopolitical cultures."
Not just California.
don't feel too bad, I exist in Joisey.
Doogle
I suspect it's time for Californian conservatives to cut and run. I see nothing but troubled waters ahead, there. They even defended tenured teachers? For goodness sake, with all the foreigners-without-a-clue flooding the state, failing education is the last thing that state needs. Leave, before the taxes eat you alive, before MS-13 starts winning sheriff elections, and before LaRaza starts winning mayor races.
"don't feel too bad, I exist in Joisey."
Well, at least we don't live in France-- yet. Grim FRegards....
Nissan is leaving this socialist-run state taking 1300 jobs with it.
Republican middle-class voters are leaving too. Pretty soon, there won't be enough taxpayers or businesses left to be exploited by the Democrat controlled state legislature.
"This can't be the same guy that everyone wanted to change the United States Constitution for, is it?"
Can you name one FReeper who did?
My husband and I are outta Kalifornia next Spring! Can't take anymore!
He needs to redraft them, package them better, and immediately go back on the offensive.
The unions did not come out of this battle unscathed. They've been bloodied and are deeply in debt. One more round could put them under.
BTW, great tag line:
(The barbarians are at the gates ... the Democrats and Republicans will open it for them)
YES!!!!
soon they will have to print their own money/pesos. You can lead a horse to water but you have to have a shovel ready when you finally have to bury it.
I agree. Let them have their Socialist paradise, and when they are starving and fighting, keep them away from the rest of us.
If they believe the ads were misleading, where were the jounalist? Where was the MSM?
And yet, Virginia was largely swung by the immigrant vote as well. We have a problem.
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