CA: Post-partisan depression (a push to go Left by the Gub)

California Republicans have gotten used to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's relentless lectures about what they need to do to become a winning party. Now the governor has taken his shtick on the road, and has begun to tell Republicans nationwide about the keys to success.

Give this governor – who campaigned for the recall on Republican themes but has since abandoned them in favor of Democratic ones – credit for gumption.

During an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," the governor said, "The ultimate goal should always be what is best for the state, or what is best for the country, rather than what is best for my party," echoing the "post-partisanship" theme that he and his advisers have been championing since his reelection.

This sounds nice, of course, but it reflects a strange rewriting of history and a contradiction of what the governor said at the Republican convention in Sacramento this month. At the convention, he assured Republicans that he was a loyal party member and that his differences were mainly over method, rather than policy.

Despite what Gov. Schwarzenegger said, we don't think Republicans, or Democrats, put their respective party above the country. We simply think they have serious disagreements about the direction of public policy, and parties tend to coalesce around certain beliefs. The governor would like us to believe that he has transcended mere partisanship, but we suspect that he simply is trying to justify the fact that he has placed his own political ambitions above everything else. If the national Republican Party were to follow the governor's advice, voters would be left with virtually no choice in policies.

The governor would like us to believe that he has transcended mere partisanship, but we suspect that he simply is trying to justify the fact that he has placed his own political ambitions above everything else.

Truth.

Why be conservative if you agree with the Democrats on everything? That's the point. Conservatives do have serious philosophical and policy disagreements with liberals and they can't papered over by a rush to embrace the Left's positions in the name of "transcending partisanship." Contra Red Arnold, partisanship is actually to the public good because it gives people a real choice. Fuziness doesn't. I think Rush observed the other day the reason the Republicans lost in November is they failed to stand FOR something. They just sat on their hands and allow the Democrats to fill the vacuum. Like like Red Arnold has done with his abandonment of Republican principles and his party in order to get along with the Democrats in Sacramento. That is exactly how Republicans should not do business with the opposition.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

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