Posted on 12/18/2004 7:32:17 PM PST by jakerobins
Report: Schwarzenegger urges GOP left turn Saturday, December 18, 2004 Posted: 7:34 PM EST (0034 GMT)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested in a German newspaper interview published Saturday that the Republican Party should move "a little to the left," a shift that he said would allow it to pick up new voters.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
PING!
(What do you think of your hero now?)
How much further to the left? This party is not going to stop being pro-2nd Amendment, pro-life and pro traditional values. The GOP won't win elections by aping the Democrats. Sorry, Arnold.
>>Reversing the order would have destroyed the gag.
I missed that. Good point. :-)
>>And, weirdly enough, only Arabic reads right-to-left.
Traditional Japanese reads right to left, also.
Yes... its time to be less accomodating and time to be more father mode - I mean its time to show the children the adults are in charge.
Absolutely right. My bad. Another kind Freeper mailed me and pointed out that Hebrew, Sanskrit are also read right to left.
That is still an interesting bit of trivia that Chester Arthur was born in Canada. I'll have to remember that one. Thanks for the little factoid!
Funny...I never looked at 'em that way. I always viewed the stars as being rotated about 60° to the right. I don't think the intent was to invert the star, but I can't speak with any authority on that.
Turns out that the claim by Clypp was false. Chester Arthur was not born in Canada. He was born in Vermont.
Lest you forget our good friends in Israel and Japan....Hebrew is right to left and so is Japanese.
So I've heard. :o)
Yea...I just caught that...but there does seem to be some conflict here:
http://www.torontofreepress.com/2003/spyros012703.htm
This was the first thing I noticed of interest from a search of Dunham Flats, Quebec on Google....not that it is gospel...If someone else wants to pursue this further, then I would be glad to listen, but I have a lot of work to do right now! I am just taking a break to look over FR.
>>My bad. Another kind Freeper mailed me and pointed out that Hebrew, Sanskrit are also read right to left.
Some folks drive on the wrong side of the road too! ;-)
(and the wrong side of the car, for that matter, lol)
That's one thing that makes America great. We detested the European way of doing things so much, that we instinctively did everything bass-ackwards...sometimes out of sheer spite...to completely break from traditions of Mother England and her Euro-allies.
If I may, let me offer a different take on this issue.
I believe that the relative merits of one individual candidate, such as Arnold, have little to do with the real motivation for those who would support such an amendment, or the real, long term damage that its passage would cause.
It would be a great temptation for those in the liberal wing of the Republican Party, including many centrists, to join with some suprisingly willing Democrats to pass a bi-partisan effort to allow (ostensibly) one highly popular individual to run for the Presidency. Look for unexpected support from the left, once this movement gathers steam. Those on the left will welcome the opportunity to appear interested in priciple at their own political expense. The result, however would be a political Hydra.
First, in the practical short term, the Dems would face a candidate who, while immensely popular, has no grounding in principle and certainly no Constitutional perspective in developing policy for the nation. It would be easy for experienced politicians and spin doctors to position themselves in such a way as to look innocuous to the electorate in terms of social issues versus such a candidate. Even if they lost the Presidency, it is doubtful that a candidate of this type would have the coattails to carry the legislature with him the way that GWB just did. Further, when lacking in pricipled base, the new President would be hard pressed to resist compromise and this would result in a return to the incrementalism of the past sixty years. (We're ALMOST there now, anyway!)
Second, we must consider what the resulting political landscape would look like after the term of a single candidate of this type has expired. For one thing, the removal of the Constitutional barrier would set a mood in the country that could well give rise to many factionalized ethnic parties vying for national office. In the resulting melee, the left could easily come forth with a unifying leader. (Imagine Hillary running with the Dem spin machine and the Lib Press against a field that included Nader, a Libertarian, Louis Farrakhan, A Religious Conservative, Mohammed Abdullah, an Indian Convenience Store Magnate and the first Migrant Farmworker to run for President.) I am assuming, of course, that someone like Arnold would not be able to maintain the coalition that won the last election.
This may, on the surface, seem absurd, but it is exactly this type of climate that has enabled Socialists to gain office in European countries, and forced those Conservatives who have managed election into unpalatable compromises. Our founders, fully realizing it, put the Constitutional barrier in place specifically to make sure that anyone elected to the Presidency would be someone raised from birth in the American Ethos.
It's a lot easier to let the horse out of the barn than to get him back in. Remember, when you see unexpectedly open-minded support coming from the left on this issue, that with them, things are never as they seem.
No, Gov. Schwarezenegger is right, at least if the Republican Party wants to be the dominant political party for the USA for decades, much like the Democrats were from ~1930-1980.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.