Posted on 03/19/2006 6:23:31 PM PST by SmithL
The Republican governor of California was in trouble as he contemplated his chances of winning a second term.
Early polls said well over half of the state's voters were inclined to turn him out, and two prominent Democratic officeholders were vying to succeed him. He suffered from defection among Republican voters, stemming from ideological quarrels with conservatives who considered him to be a RINO (Republican In Name Only) who was too liberal on spending, abortion and environmental regulation.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006? It could be, but it also describes the uncomfortable position in which Schwarzenegger's political mentor, Pete Wilson, found himself in early 1994, when the venerable Field Poll reported that 61 percent of voters were opposed to giving him a second term, including 40 percent of Republicans.
Nine months after the poll was taken, however, Wilson was not only re-elected, but rang up a 15 percentage-point landslide over Democrat Kathleen Brown, who earlier had enjoyed a 23-point polling lead.
While Brown hoped to make Wilson's unpopular governorship the issue, a traditional strategy for any challenger, the governor and his advisers turned it around, making crime and illegal immigration the driving issues of the campaign, helped by Brown's fumbles on both. Wilson championed a ballot measure, Proposition 187, that would deny public services to illegal immigrants, and the voters who approved it overwhelmingly also voted for him.
The conventional political wisdom ever since is that while Proposition 187 worked for Wilson that year, it poisoned the Republican Party's claim on Latino voters and sowed the seeds of the party's fall from favor in subsequent elections - a dubious rationale.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Nope! :-)
This just proves that the people... The GRASSROOTS conservative people can initiate something and then if it looks promising, the corporate candidates will rush in to snatch it/seize it like a sucker fish sucking up pond scum!!!
Only if it also accommodates their greedy agenda, of course.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Most of the Hispanics I know are most certainly against illegals and amnesty.
Most say they had to work for what they got and don't want the government cheapening citizenship.
Amerigomag, I think your dubbing of the Schwartzenegger administration as the "Wilsonnegger Gang," is absolutely spot-on and perfect!!! In fact I think you should receive some sort of special recognition from FR for coming up with such a well deserved and perfect slur!!!
In fact, I think somebody ought to write Walters with a reference to the "Wilsonnegger Gang" and see if we can't get the MSM to start using such a colorful moniker for his maladministration!!! It's time for this phoney Grinninator to be subjected to ridicule!!!
So you don't approve of him making major overhalls to workman's comp?
You don't approve of his vetoing of the gay marriage?
You don't approve of his recinding of the car tax?
You don't approve of the fact that he hasn't raised taxes even while under extreme pressure to do so?
Man, I sure wish we had Davis back!
How did you ever become such a suck-up to someone that has sold out every conservative and Republican principle found in the CA Republican platform??? Me thinks you should be zbigredfaceddogz, buddy!!!
Slanted? Which part of it distorts the truth? Did he not do these things? Would they not have been different under Davis?
doesn't include the much longer list of huge negatives he has imposed on us
Enlighten me A. as to exactly what you mean, B. why those things wouldn't have happened under Davis.
and the fact that he has just continued most of the Davis traits, in fact has made Davis look like a piker in all the areas that we recalled Davis for.
Interesting. 'We' recalled Davis for all the same reasons, it seems.
I also breathlessly await how he's made Davis 'look like a piker' in anything. How, in pandering to Public Employees Unions? He tried to gut them, only to have Conservatives not turn out for the election. Go figure. In raising taxes? Oh wait, he hasn't. It not cutting taxes? Oh wait, he's done that too.
How did you ever become such a suck-up to someone that has sold out every conservative and Republican principle found in the CA Republican platform???
A. That's total bull$#!t. B. Supporting doesn't mean 'sucking up'. C. What has Bill Simon done in accomplishing things in the Republican plank? OH WAIT, HE HASN'T. Why? BECAUSE HE WASN'T ELECTED. D. I suppose that by supporting Arnold, Tom McClintock is a RINO SELLOUT too.
Man, you utopian conservatives sure are running out of friends fast!
Me thinks you should be zbigredfaceddogz, buddy!!!
I thik you should get out of 3rd grade playground tactics to try to win arguements.
I also think you should have a better then 3rd grade reasoning behind them.
That is right. He was front line there for a while.
Utopian being anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy?
That's a check mark in Bill Bradley's column.
He was there!
He played it week before last when he joined the Western Governers Association in urging Congress to pass immigration reform.
Big deal, they are good at the final poll in major races. Since there are rarely major upsets in the final weeks, so is anyone who reads the news.
The Field poll has some major, major flaws, starting with their sampling. They sample counties based on population not on the number of people in those counties that actually ever vote. So San Francisco, for example, is always oversampled. It's why things always look bad for Republicans and conservatives early on in the Field poll, and then get better later.
The really good private pollsters can call successfully races much farther out than Field does.
Yes, he had been developing the immigration theme publicly for that long. I think he started in August 1993 with a test market effort in Fresno, California, his usual test market locale. I remember it well because I was writing columns at the time about Wilson's hypocrisy on the illegal immigration issue -- he had sponsored legislation allowing more foreign nationals into the country as ag guest workers, didn't favor a crackdown on employers, etc.
This happened after they tried a test market positive campaign in Fresno and Eureka -- Wilson's secondary test market locale throughout his career -- and it bombed. People did not buy that things were going better or that he was responsible. I just talked about that experience earlier this morning with one of Wilson's former top people. Why? Because Arnold is about to unveil a TV ad about how things are better under his governorship ...
Second, thanks for the details. First hand accounts are appreciated.
I suspect we are widely separated on certain aspects of this issue but we do have a common ground on two themes:
1) I'd like to see an informed discussion about this. I don't see it.
2) The left and the right are not as widely separated on a solution, as the polarized, vocal minorities on each extreme would lead a prudent man to believe.
Wilson's long history of marching hither and yawn, ideologically, is the best evidence I have that political pragmatism, not a steady, principled drum beat, was the guiding factor in his adoption of the foundling.
One area of disagreement in your recent piece was: (which by that point she was probably going to lose anyway). I'm not so sure if 187 were removed from that equation.
Brown was a good counter balance to Wilson's earned image as a jerk on the public level. Wilson's pragmatic style and his base comments had alienated many hard working troops in the trenches of the CRP and had he not jumped on the 187 band wagon, making little effort to control the inevitable descent into a cultural war, he may have fared much more poorly that November.
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