Remember this?
To: RonDog
Hey Ron!
The Sacramento Bee, as you know, is basically a FAX machine for the DNC. But its even-handed political commentator Daniel Weintraub (Insider -- you know, your man Hewitt's bud) said this of that meeting in his blog:
But it is not, as Paul Harvey would say, the end of the story. The scene was incredible. I have been following candidates for governor in this state since 1986, and there simply has never been anything like this, or even close. The Schwarzenegger campaign kept the details about this event under wraps until early this morning to keep down the size of the crowd. A political campaign trying to keep down a crowd? The Orange County Register this morning carried a listing of where all the major candidates were appearing today – but it didn’t include Arnold coming to their readers’ own backyard. It didn’t matter.I was there by 9 a.m. for the 12:30 pm event on Main Street, near the Huntington Beach Pier, and the sidewalks were already buzzing. By noon the place was a madhouse. A crowd of a couple hundred people stood outside a restaurant where he was coming to speak to a group of local business owners, while several dozen more onlookers leaned from balconies overhead. The throng spilled out into the cross street, which the police eventually blocked off to auto traffic. And a receiving line two or three deep on the sidewalk stretched several hundred feet down Main Street toward a store into which Arnold was headed. The crowd waited for over an hour under a hot midday sun to get a glimpse of him. As Arnold made that walk, the crush of reporters, fans and gawkers was overwhelming. A couple of small children who got in the way were nearly trampled. The closest thing to which I can compare it was the mosh pit at the Van’s Warped Tour punk concert I attended with my son a few weeks ago. People were screaming for Arnold, reaching out to touch him, seeking (and getting) autographs. My favorite was this one "The teachers are for you, Arnold! The teachers are for you!" (What, they didn't get the word from the CTA?)
Is this the best way to choose a governor? Not if you want to see the line items in the budget he might propose next January. But I talked to eight or ten local residents who had wandered onto the event and was struck by how little they cared about his specific policies. And it wasn’t just that they were star-struck. They were attracted to Arnold’s passion, his optimism, his heart, his take-charge attitude. They have a sense that things are going downhill in California, and they don’t want to hear excuses. They don’t want to hear that it was the private energy generators or the economy or the Bush Administration. They want to hear someone tell them that he can make it right again. That’s what they seem to be hearing from Arnold.
This was conservative Republican country, so it wasn’t a surprise that they were overwhelmingly in favor of the recall. But it was something of a surprise that they were so comfortable with Arnold. I didn’t hear anything about Prop. 13 or abortion or gay rights. I didn’t hear much pining for a “real Republican.” If this was any indication, Arnold is going to win over much of the Republican base. And he can keep wooing the center.
I'm increasingly confident that Schw can take it -- or California deserves its own doom. Well, I already know it does; still, on rare occasions, the California electorate has a passing flash of sanity. I'm hoping this will be one of those rare occasions.
Your "sellout" FRiend,
Dan
38 posted on 08/24/2003 7:34 AM PDT by BibChr ("...behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD, so what wisdom is in them?" [Jer. 8:9])