I did say that these were just my opinion. They were not derived from any specific words of the Senator. I believe that he did look for the positives within the agenda to be supportive (I think we saw that many times in word, and deed), and tried to be supportive of those items. I believe he was less skeptical than many of us, as evidenced by many of his same gestures. Do you not like to take a man at his word? It is *my opinion* that that is what Tom was trying to do.
As much as everyone tried to paint Tom as a rigid idealogue, he was much too pragmatic under the circumstances. Again—my opinion.
Amen, Tom is a treasure and a man of integrity and courage, but I’m being redundant...
The Republican Party's leading candidate was neither a traditional Republican nor beholden to the party mechanism. The party was the only mechanism available in the state that could provide the average Republican candidate with sufficient funds/support to competitively campaign for office.
When the CAGOP grasped for survival and cast their lot with a high profile candidate the die was cast. Traditional, Republican partisans, at all levels within the party hierarchy, found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Capitulate to the current whims of the elected leadership ... and continue receiving their support or .... object to the bastardization of the party and loose all hope of reelection and perhaps even the significance of the CAGOP in California politics. Many, including the Senator, elected the former.
Those who capitulated had no illusions about our Austrian guest. They simply made pragmatic, political decisions which allowed them to feast for another day at the public trough.
From one perspective, the governor gets more points than his philosophical adversary, the senator. Throughout this sorted affair the governor, in spite of his rhetoric, seldom drifted from his core principles while the senator eventually surrendered his principles in a effort to extend his public, political career.