Posted on 11/24/2006 8:10:17 PM PST by FairOpinion
Quietly encouraged by the Schwarzenegger administration, a lot of pundits nevertheless have been pushing this idea of an Arnold Way for the Beltway. But conservatives - the ones who would actually have to change their course under the Arnold Way — aren't buying it.
CNN's Bill Schneider "informed the GOP that the way to recover from midterm losses is to imitate Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and embrace liberal policies," the liberal-media hating News Busters concluded. My favorite response to the Whalen piece came from Weekly Standard reader Calcowgirl, who simply pointed to Schwarzenegger's deeds as proof he wasn't one of them. She (I assumed Calcowgirl is a female) keeps a list of the governor's offenses from 2006:
.........
-- Signed AB 1207, Code of Fair Campaign Practices (homosexual agenda)
Absentee ballots are part of the homosexual agenda? Anyway, the real question is: How many of these would President George W. Bush support?
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
That would be the same Arnold who cut the legs out from under the Vietnamese Republican candidate in that same area in the recent election.
By your line of reasoning Ronald Reagan was a Republican Partisan who achieved nothing.
I see him as committed conservative idealogue who used the vehicle of party politics to become the head of a nation and among other achievements defeated communism in Eastern Europe.
You are a liar.
CCG and the rest of the usuals on the CA threads have been tireless at promoting going to the polls to support the conservative candidates and initiative issues.
What we did not do is fall sway to your propaganda promoting lickspittle subservience to Arnoldism. That emperor has no clothes.
Your twisted reasoning would somehow paint those who consistently hold and promote conservative ideals, conservative candidates and conservative issues, as "faux". Meanwhile you, who holds to absolutely no principals besides "just win, baby", are somehow authentic. Your "move left to save conservatism" advocacy is simply more evidence that you don't give a hoot about achieving anything conservative, of moving CA a millimeter to the Right.
In the meantime REAL conservatives recognized that while Arnold may not be conservative, but he has kept the socialist Dem Legislature from enacting their full agenda, by vetoing key bills and there is night and day between Arnold and his ex-Dem opponent, Angelides.
No, there isn't. The difference is night and sunset. Instead of giving Dems their full agenda, Arnold gives them 80%. The difference is that he drags enough wishy-washy turf protectors along to back him up on the annual budgetary disaster.
Meanwhile, he uses that popularity to push populist crap like mini-Kyoto and other junk science that an Angelides would never get off the ground. Or like his new MediCal for Everyone "goal". REAL conservatives see him moving the State of CA Leftward faster than Grey Davis could have hoped for in his wildest wet dreams, all the while gutting the Party and backstabbing anyone who might be seen as diluting his influence. He is the epitome of the Clintonian Triangulated Politician.
I see your point. Some conservatives have made similar points about the behavior of the Republican Congress when Clinton was president vs. now under President Bush. Policy wise, I still think we gained under President Bush, but now these recent elections, have set us back from all the gains we would have made if we had won or lost less badly.
For now the state of affairs is worse in CA than in Washington, at least to me.
I would like to thank you for being so congenial and hospitable on this CA thread to an out-of-stater from PA, and for allowing me to participate in the discussion. : )
Well reasoned discourse is always welcome, even if from a contrary point of view.
It is the constant straw men and ad hominums from the Usual Suspects we grow impatient of. Their Big Lie propaganda techniques tend to work if not constantly refuted, but it does become wearisome.
Your side uses the big lie. I've no problem with honest, well reasoned discourse.
You're welcome! Stop by anytime. Reasoned, sincere discussion is always welcome.
Yeah, right. You are one of the ones to whom I have specifically pointed out your use of both ad hominum and strawman arguments. That you persist in using them speaks volumes.
You throw out ad hominums so thick and fast, you must have a macro key set up to type them for you.
Only at posters whom I view as having a ulterior motive in their writings. Only ones who I think are fifth columnists, socialist scum masquerading as extreme conservatives in order to alienate people from the right. Their constant desire to qualify and classify, divide and conquer, gives them away. They count on good, honest conservatives to carry their water, to support the counter-productive caricature.
You can try to justify your reasons for Big Lie propaganda techniques however you like. It still makes you a willing participant every time you use it.
Who are you to judge ulterior motives? What do you think mine are? Where do you come off calling following the actual Party Platform as being an extreme conservative caricature. Your apparent motive is to shove the CAGOP down Arnold's happy path to socialized everything, bought on the charge card.
You accuse others of counting on "good, honest conservatives to carry their water", when that is exactly what FO and you demand we do for Arnold's water. That ain't water, Grunt. It's kool-aide, and you are a pusher. Anyone who pushes it is either not a good conservative or not an honest one, if only to his self.
Here's a simple guideline: anything that moves the agenda leftward isn't conservative. You can try to sell it as a necessary compromise, but quit trying to sell it as the moral high road.
I don't think you're a fifth columnist, not purposely trying to keep the right off it's feet, but you do carry their water, (koolaid), and serve their purpose of division. As long as we can be divided so easily we will continue to be conquered.
There must be, at some set point, a division between what is Left and what is Right. I can happily compromise with issues that fall to the Right of that line, but Left of my position. For example, I support Bush, though his domestic agenda is well Left of my preferences.
Arnold and his overall agenda and achievements are to the Left of that line, and headed rapidly West. That makes joining with his partisans impossible, unless and until he moves back to the ostensibly Republican side of that line.
The division has not been caused by the Conservatives who hold steadfast, but by the compromisers who have sold out, gotten lost, or just don't care about any principles beyond holding "power". Y'all moved away; you can heal the division by simply coming home.
I've not left home. I support the conservative wing of the party and think now, (that in the election we had our hat handed to us), that the remaining Republicans stick to their conservative principles and demonstrate the reasons why we think they're superior. The recall was a bad idea and it further twisted the aberration that we have in California and gave us Arnie. Just as there is no way McC could have won the recall there is no way Arnie could have won with a proceeding primary. Arnie captured the middleground populace by distancing himself from the extreme right. If he had moved closer to the extreme right he would have been defeated. Now he holds the populace by 'doing the people's werk', and the people like it.
Arnold co-opted the recall effort, with the connivance of the Duf's and Riordan's. He jumped in at the last second, after all the heavy lifting had been done, and caused the very division that you decry.
Just as there is no way McC could have won the recall there is no way Arnie could have won with a proceeding primary.
I disagree with your premise. As was shown in this last election, far more Californians were willing to vote for McClintock than for Bustagut (McC got 45.2% in his race, Busta got 38.6%). FO and some others here were out 24/7 with the same Big Lie tactics back then to peel off all the weak sister voters who would have gone "anti-Grey". They were successful in painting McC as an "extremist right winger". It was BS then, and it is BS now, but they were able to successfully sell Arnold by making people think his movie persona was his real persona.
Arnie captured the middleground populace by distancing himself from the extreme right. If he had moved closer to the extreme right he would have been defeated. Now he holds the populace by 'doing the people's werk', and the people like it.
No, he captured the muddled middle via a combination of gross populism and painting the mainstream GOP platform as "extreme right". He triangulated, using classic Clintonian tactics. He keeps the muddled middle the same way all politicians with no core values do; he buys them with bread and circuses.
The big problem is that bread and circuses cost real money, and Arnie is running up the charge card to pay for it. He's gonna skip town when the bill comes due and leave the GOP the blame and the property owners the bill. That's where the folks who say he didn't raise taxes are being disingenuous. He didn't raise them immediately, for income, and he didn't curtail spending or cancerous spending growth. He did make those tax hikes inevitable.
There you go, by your own admission, 'extremist right wingers' lose. If you can paint someone as such, he'll lose. Those who I refer to as fifth columnists did a lot of painting of McC as 'extreme', knowing that would help ensure his defeat.
Then FO is one of your fifth columnists, and you sure have spent a lot of electronic ink propping up his/her/its attacks. Try looking up what they were saying in 2003 about McC. Perhaps you are identifying the wrong herd of ilk as being blameworthy.
Who was the other candidate you were considering, I could never get calcowgirl to tell me who she was trying to get us to vote for.
I responded to your repeated badgering and name-calling time after time after time after time.
I suggest additional study in reading comprehension.
What was that name again?
You're a loyal American conservative, so have at it, tex.
A lot of ugly things were said during the recall. I said some of 'em. The ilk said the same and worse about Arnie. It became an emotional issue: those who believed McC had a chance and those who 'knew' otherwise. The ilk love it when we rehash old battles because that allows them to keep up the division. FO has an agenda, as do we all, but the underlying message in FO's message was unity. The overwhelming message of the ilk is division.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
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