Posted on 09/04/2006 10:19:40 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
I don't recall even being in a situation where the closer Election Day gets, the less likely I am to vote for the GOP nominee.
Yet, that is where I find myself vis-a-vis Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I'm one of many conservatives who voted for Arnold in the recall, despite my preference for Tom McClintock. I found the prospect of Cruz Bustamante in the governor's office horrifying and wasn't convinced McClintock could win. The stakes so too high I though it prudent to back the Republican with the best chance of winning, and so I cast my vote for Arnold. Like other conservatives, I comforted myself with the rumor we'd heard for years that Arnold was really a libertarian. So, although he was squishy on the social issues, at least he'd be hard core on taxes, spending and freedom issues. After all, he was a Milton Friedman fan!
But ever since the Governor's nauseating policy of apologizing for the special election of 2005, it's been steadily more difficult to assembly a conservative Republican rationale for supporting his re-election.
He's signed a non-aggression pact with the government employee unions, promising he will never, ever again try to rein in their power. He talks a big game about building infrastructure, but is unable to just come out and support an infrastructure plan -- the 241 toll road completion in Orange County -- that has been EIRed and is ready to go.
This alleged acolyte of Milton Friedman signs an "anti-greenhouse gases" bill that will have no impact on the climate but will have negative impacts on California's economic competitiveness. And this is the same guy who tells every Republican crowd the same story about how he left Austria to escape its stultifying socialism -- even as he signs neo-Euro socialist bills like the emissions cap. I thought we elected a Republican as Governor during the rcall - not Al Gore.
Since being beaten by the government employee unions and adopting the Stoclkholm Syndrone as his political survival strategy, the Governor easgerly signs any minimum wage bill the Democrats send his way -- even though he knows they are job destroyers. He knows this, and yet signs them with a smile, anyway.
Old arguments employed to keep conservatives in line like "he's good on judges" hold no water when it comes to the Schwarzenegger Administration. Yes, he's appointed more Republicans than Gray Davis, but Republicans expect something more than appointing more Republican judges than your Democratci predecessor did. For example, how about no appointing public defedners who are proud of their qualifications to defend Serbian war crimninals at The Hague?
The Governor signed the latest in Sheila Kuehl's endless succession of "gay rights" bills -- SB 1441. Did the Governor actually read this bill?:
The bill would also expand the definition of discrimination under these provisions to include a perception that a person has any of these enumerated characteristics or that the person is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of these characteristics.
I would really love to hear the Governor affirm that he actually read that dangerous claptrap -- nothing is objectively real because reality is nothing more than perception -- and thought it was legislation that must be signed.
Everyday, I get e-mails from the Governor's re-election campaign. And I am trying to think of a single one that has, for even a moment, made me feeel proud Arnold Schwarzenegger is my party's nominee for Governor. And I can't think of a one. What I do remember are press releases bragging how Gov. Schwarzenegger is spending more money on education than anybody ever has in state history. Yessir -- that's why I became a Republican! To throw record sums of taxpayer dollars on failed government programs.
Perhaps the reader can detect the depth of my ever-deepening disenchantment with the Schwarzenegger Administration. Not that it really matters, because the Governor will be re-elected. He's blessed with a Democratic opponent who is a living caricature of the liberal excesses of his party and who gifted the Schwarzenegger campaign with his calls for billions in new taxes.
The Governor triangulates, buys off key Democratic special interests, adopts Democratic policies, and keeps enough conservatives in line by stoking their Fear of an Angelides Planet. He will win, and the Republican Party will find itself victorious in gubernatorial race but lacking a soul.
I think it was George Washington who said that a political party without principles is nothing more than a conspiracy to hold power. I'm afraid that is what is happening to the California Republican Party under the administration of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that is why I have gone from being a unapologetic supporter of his election in the recall to being undecided about whether I'll vote to re-elect him.
The GOP was never a third party. The Whigs were done and the Republicans were second to the Democrats in their first Presidential campaign in 1856.
Only as an chartered organization, not as a political group. The GOP was constituted virtually entirely out of the Whigs which was formed out of a third party splinter (the National Republicans) off the Democratic Republicans in the 1820s.
cut-n-run from the unmanageable quagmire
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cut-n-run to where?
If it is not fought here, it is only a matter of time before it will follow and engulf the rest of the country.
I'm only "picky" when people post falsehoods and lies.
What does salary have to do with anything? Unlike some here, I believe politicians work for the people. And when they run in a given party, they should respect the party platform, not totally abandon it. A politician "earns" votes by representing his constitutents. Pushing a big-spending, big-borrowing, big-government plan along with more regulations based on junk-science doesn't fit the bill of what I, or most other Republicans, endorse.
That's utter nonsense! The people who voted against the initiatives did so for a variety of reasons. These were 4 totally unrelated propositions. I voted for some and against some. Opposition to more borrowing (buried in Prop 76) or opposition to an unelected, unaccountable body to select new districts (Prop 77) was certainly NOT endorsing Socialism.
The campaign was lost because they created bogus polls and then believed their own garbage. Then, they ran a totally inept arrogant campaign that did nothing to inform the electorate but alienated a huge number of voters. In desperation, they even resorted to scare tactics like "Vote for Proposition 76 or I will have to raise taxes" which, in retrospect, was totally ludicrous as only a few months later they announced new revenues of about $5 Billion. As predicted before the election was over, the CA GOP campaign hacks decided to blame their own failure in the Special Election using the "Conservatives didn't show up" myth instead of acknowledging that they ran an inept campaign and bought into bogus polls. Apparently you bought into the myth and choose to promote it, all the way from Indiana no less!
Interview with Arnold Steinberg, Republican Strategist. November 2, 2005:
"The bottom line is that what we're seeing in this election was entirely foreseeable. The only surprise is that otherwise sharp conservatives and Republicans still fall for the line that when various public polls all look bad for our side, it's part of a liberal or left-wing conspiracy to tilt the election, and that "internals" show we're going to win. Well, I don't think the "internals" of the other side show good numbers for these ballot propositions. I hear they've been pretty unequivocal for a long time, and that the governor's ads were getting nowhere. If so, you wonder why they were kept on for so long. Increasing the media buy -- if you have the wrong messenger or message -- is not going to help. But, remember, we were told that their tracking was showing wonderful progress. If they lose all four, we should have a contest on how they'll explain their polling. Maybe it will be the old standby -- opinion shifted at the end, the last few days, and momentum was suddenly against them. More likely, they'll blame Republican voters for not coming out, as if this would be some total surprise. But major donors like to believe these arcane polling explanations, because it's easier to do so than admit they've been had. I mean, when is the last time a rich guy at the Lincoln Club admitted he was gullible and taken in by a poll that cooked the numbers?"
Well, you're welcome, kind sir!
If you liked that, there was a good follow up interview in February, 2006.
I posted some excerpts on this thread, with a link to the whole interview.
CA: Another Interview With Arnie Steinberg (Republican Strategist/Analyst) FlashReport ^ | February 10, 2006 | Jon Fleischman Posted on 02/10/2006 6:59:57 PM PST by calcowgirl
I definitely sensed the glee.
The Whig Party was never a third party either, they were formed in 1833 out of remnants of the defunct Federalists. None of the four major parties in the history of America's two party system was ever a third party. We had Federalists vs. Democrats (or Democratic Republicans), Democrats vs. Whigs, and Democrats vs. Republicans. New major parties only form after the collapse of an earlier major party, they don't arise from third parties.
Got a source for that? It's not what I'm finding. I've already cited the National Republicans as the principle element of which the Whigs were composed, which you can confirm here and here. The National Republicans were an arm of the Democratic Republicans, not the Federalists.
New major parties only form after the collapse of an earlier major party, they don't arise from third parties.
It may be true that new major parties come to power only after others go defunct and their members go looking for something to support, but where they go looking includes existing organizations which can lie in obscurity for decades until the shift. Hence, if either major party in the US fractures, look for large elements to align with existing groups.
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