Posted on 12/16/2005 8:57:06 AM PST by NormsRevenge
It was mid-July 2004. The constitutional deadline for enacting a state budget had passed a month earlier, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, eight months into his governorship, was squabbling with Democratic lawmakers over a spate of budget-related issues.
Schwarzenegger was frustrated because he had, in his own mind, bent over backward to accommodate Democrats' demands for sparing health and welfare programs from severe cuts, even though the state faced a multibillion-dollar deficit. He had abandoned his initial demands for midyear spending reductions and then added $3 billion to his revised budget.
In return, Schwarzenegger had sought concessions, such as making it easier for local governments and schools to contract out services, rather than restrict them to unionized employees. Mostly, however, he wanted to deliver his first budget on time to demonstrate that his election in 2003 was bearing fruit, and Democrats, he concluded, were gratuitously stalling. So he returned to the campaign trail with rallies before friendly audiences to bash them as "obstructionists," ...
--snip--
"If they (Democrats) don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers, and I want them to make the millions of dollars - if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men," Schwarzenegger shouted.
At the time, it seemed that "girlie men" (interestingly enough, first uttered by comedian Dana Carvey during a "Saturday Night Live" parody of Schwarzenegger) was just another throwaway line from the one-time action movie star, something like "I'll be back" or "Hasta la vista, baby." But in truth, it was the moment when the first phase of Schwarzenegger's up-and-down governorship ended and a 16-month power struggle, culminating in the Nov. 8 special election, began.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The line got him a cheap pop at the RNC, at least!
just another throwaway line from the one-time action movie star, something like "I'll be back" or "Hasta la vista, baby."
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from a throwaway Gubinor who can't tell his left from his right or can he?
Or so the girlie men want us to believe.
Nonsense. The author would have us believe that the Democrats in the legislature would have gone along with Schwarzenegger if only he had not spoken harshly about them. I don't buy that for an instance.
Exactly right. They would have him show weakness? Yeah! That'd work real well.
Sometimes, just for the heck of it, I do a really bad Ahnold impression and say, "Don't be such a girly man!" It's so much fun... :)
Walters has been a Dem hack for years.
Yes, the Dems won the last round, but they had to empty their coffers of tens of millions of dollars to do it. The battle is not over.
I expected those who think Girlie Man was some genius stroke to show up.
imo, it's sad commentary on the depths that politics has sunk to as well as folks ability to analyze politicians and see thru the hype that surrounds this Gub.
If Walters thinks the democrats would have gone along with budgetary sanity if only Arnold had been "nicer" to them, then Walters is living in a dream world.
The phrase is apropos especially in CA, specifically San Francisco.
It would have been nice if he had tried to show a little backbone on the budget side of things.
Maybe, next time. (Yeah right)
Nonsense.
'Girlie men' remark began Schwarzenegger's battle and downfall
Nonsense.
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It could have been his 2 budgets he proposed too, both whoppers. or quite a few other things.
Or was it his angular muscles and sagging wife?
Hey, Maria looked like she won the Extreme Makeover competition if a recent pic is untouched. ;-)
cotton balls and pancake powder can do that for a person.
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