CA: GOP seems ready to be fooled twice - Schwarzenegger hasn't earned loyalty of conservatives

The Orange County Register ^ | August 27, 2006 | STEVEN GREENHUT

[calcowgirl]

Those who believe in nothing will fall for anything, as the old saying goes. So it's only fitting that a Republican Party that has ceased to believe in anything has fallen for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Maybe in the early days of his administration, and through the defeat of his reform agenda last November, it was defensible to support him. But no more. Yet many Republican leaders at the state GOP convention in Century City were still atwitter over the Terminator's tired clichés and faux tough talk.

--snip

At Century City, Schwarzenegger blasted the Democrats: "Our friends in the other campaign want to go back to the failed policies of the past – higher taxes, more government spending, more government regulations and less growth."

Compare what the other party does with Schwarzenegger's program of higher debt spending, more government spending and more government regulations and less growth, and it's quite a choice, isn't it?

Of course, the Democrats are always bad. So, of course Republicans will usually rally around their candidate, no matter how far afield his viewpoints might be. But a point is reached where it's not worth it anymore, where victory isn't so sweet because "our" guy isn't in any fundamental way different from "their" guy.

--snip

At the Republican convention, Schwarzenegger refused to be seen with the Republican slate of down-ticket candidates. Tom McClintock, one of the most principled men in modern political life, is running for lieutenant governor against John Garamendi, who during an Editorial Board meeting a couple years ago actually sung the praises of the Cuban health care system! ... The governor is too good to stand with McClintock and Poochigian or some of the other perfectly well-qualified GOP candidates for statewide office? Then Republicans should be too good to stand with him.

[Amerigomag]

Conservatives would indeed like to remove the dissidents from the CAGOP. One of the most effective ways is to frustrate their intentions and work in earnest to defeat their plans to liberalize the CAGOP.

An obvious target is their liberal, celebrity spokesman, forced down the throat of the general party membership by an elite group of authoritarian party insiders who felt they were above the membership and the democratic process.

Hopefully the CAGOP's recently adopted, European liberal will not be reelected, the liberal dissidents will be thrown out of the CAGOP leadership and the CAGOP can return to its platform, traditions and principles that have served the party, the state and this country so well.

The CAGOP will rue the day of reckoning if a socialist like Angelides is elected because the CAGOP offered a liberal as a counterpoint. Conservatives will probably march, en mass, on Burbank with pitchforks brandished. The Million Pitchfork March.

[BillyBoy]

To not vote for Arnold is to vote a Gray Davis-clone back into office.

There. Fixed.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
-- Gray Davis on the appointment of his top aide, Susan Kennedy, to be Arnold's new Chief-of-Staff.

[68 grunt]

... Tell it to Greenhut. He must be another "agent provocateur", huh? ...

Your ilk buddy emailed him, maybe he'll out himself. I'd put him more in the 'useful idiot' category, myself. He a journo so he writes to an audience.

Sure, I'd like a republican governor to act like one and I'm disappointed that he's not, but, at the same time, I sure wouldn't expect your candidate, a socialist demoncrap, to act like one either.

[68 grunt]

Hopefully the CAGOP's recently adopted, European liberal will not be reelected, the liberal dissidents will be thrown out of the CAGOP leadership and the CAGOP can return to its platform, traditions and principles that have served the party, the state and this country so well. With the way the ilk demonstrate alienating people there will never be another republican elected and the socialist will have free reign, which is your apparent goal.

With the way the ilk demonstrate alienating people there will never be another republican elected and the socialists will have free reign, which is your apparent goal.

[Wiseghy]

Agreed. Clinton won, and became a beloved political figure to this day in spite of his outrageous personal failings, by co-opting issues of the opposing party to capture moderates. Mostly, he crafted scripts to say the right things, while implementing generally partisan policies.

CA is actually a three party state, with moderates filling the middle swing vote even more than the nation as whole. Here, he/she with the biggest tent wins. So, whine and moan and carry on all you want.

Real political operatives know that winning is what matters. Saints like McClintock are hard to come by, but perhaps a Republican victory would set him up for a respectable run at the top spot. A Republican loss most certainly would not.

[Amerigomag]

You continually refer to Schwartzekennedy as a Pete Wilson Republican.

Nope.

The reference to the Wilsonegger Gang involves the period from early to mid 2003. During that period, sensing the unrest in the natives and harboring a long cultivated grudge against the CAGOP leadership, Pete Wilson and his old staffers squeezed money from liberal, Republican businessmen in Orange County and cultivated a spokesman, Schwarzenegger, for their new, political enterprise.

The Austrian is not a Wilson clone. He's European. He's liberal. Wilson was a patriot. Wilson did have moments when guided by party traditions and principles. Generally, however, Wilson was guided by expediency, not political principle. The Austrian does exhibit Wilson like flashes of expediency but always tends toward his liberal core.

In the ensuing months since the die was cast in mid 2003, the relationship between Wilson and Schwarzenegger has evolved to the classic: Master loses control of protege.

The continuing use of the term Wilsonegger Gang is a reminder to the CAGOP, which maintains a subscription on FR, that their surrender to the gang in the summer of 2003 is what led to the mess that Republicans in California currently endure.

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP!

[goldstategop]

In all honesty, Wilson would tack our way at times to make up with conservatives. His protege has blown hard - in the other direction. At times you wonder why he's still a Republican.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[Lancey Howard]

Are you really aching to have Angelides as governor?

It seems that every time a poster criticizes Arnold you respond with your, "So you'd rather have lung cancer than colon cancer?" argument. It's tired.

[calcowgirl]

I sure wouldn't expect your candidate, a socialist demoncrap, to act like one either.

I have no candidate in this race; that's the problem. The CA GOP made sure of that by changing the rules to avoid a primary. Now we have two liberals to choose from which is no choice at all.

I have never voted for a democrat and don't intend to in this race. I just want Arnold to stop all of the liberal garbage he is promoting! Voting for him will just reinforce his recent behavior.

[goldstategop]

If we abandon our principles like we're doing, we don't deserve to complain about the miseries being inflicted upon our state. Arnold is more accurately, a Trojan Horse for the Left. It would be easier for the CAGOP to stand for something if he lost.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[calcowgirl]

CA is actually a three party state, with moderates filling the middle swing vote even more than the nation as whole.

Can you tell me what this "middle" party stands for? How would their platform read? Where do they stand on Government regulation, gun control, abortion, the death penalty, social programs, smaller v. larger government, etc.? Just a little bit of socialism is good?

[Amerigomag]

there will never be another republican elected

There are many Republicans elected. Most of them follow party traditions and conservative principles. There are enough, in fact, that they could control the legislative work product with the cooperation of the executive.

But alas, the liberal Republican in the executive has chosen to bypass his party compatriots in the legislature and work directly in cooperation with the Democrat leadership, enacting an endless parade of liberal nonsense into law. More spending, higher taxes, greater debt, less personal freedoms and the loss of a democratic process within the CAGOP itself.

What is pushing California further into a liberal honey pot is the CAGOP, by supporting a liberal as their principal, elected official. When this liberal European is turned out or termed out and his supporters are driven from the CAGOP leadership, the CAGOP will regain its character and its membership will once again make a unified commitment to support their party.

[goldstategop]

And sideline conservatives in the party. Something to think about in November. For those who will vote this fall, vote for the downticket GOP slate, vote NO on the bonds and vote YES on 82, 85 and 90.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[goldstategop]

The ideal moderate would split the difference, taking the good parts of both philosophies and leaving the bad parts by the roadside. That's why they're so assiduously courted by politicians.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[goldstategop]

To be fair, he has held the line on tax increases. But all of us can be forgiven for wondering how long he will maintain it once he's reelected and never has to face the voters again.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )

[calcowgirl]

The ideal moderate would split the difference...

One might "split the difference" in making a compromise between left and right on specific legislation or a course of action. I don't know how to split the difference in a principle or philosophy. You either favor socialism and big government, or you don't. I don't--I think Government is already bloated and they are not the solution to our problems, they create the problems. Introducing big bureaucracy and regulation, for things like fighting global warming, is just plain nonsense--not "moderation.

[calcowgirl]

To be fair, he has held the line on tax increases.

Only if you use a narrow definition of "tax". Under the defininition of "taxes" that Arnold uses to frame Angelides, Arnold has raised "taxes" by billions. University fees, solar roofs, hydrogen highways, after-school-programs, healthy families... etc. etc. etc.

[Lancey Howard]

To be fair, he has held the line on tax increases. But all of us can be forgiven for wondering how long he will maintain it once he's reelected and never has to face the voters again.

THAT is the real danger. It would also depend on whether Arnold is delusional enough to be serious about trying to get the Constitution amended so that he can run for President.

[goldstategop]

The problem is its hard to keep government in the middle, not having it do too much or do too little. Where does one draw the line to make that happen? Its an ideal that can never be discovered in real life and the moderate usally has to wind up picking a side on a given issue. He ends up pleasing no one and his labors don't produce an outcome every one can live with because both the Left and the Right want to change that to their own advantage. You cannot avoid making a choice in life and this is the great flaw of being a moderate - its ultimately an evasion of reality.

(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )