[Cultural Jihad]

I have said that I don't think McClintock hurts Arnold all that much, yeah, there's drain there but it's at the marginal levels and could be considered decisive if the election (between Bustamante and Arnold) were exceedingly close.

You can't be serious. This is not some kind of primary election. The one with the most votes wins, period. Bustamante will get a lion's share of the Democratic votes while the Republicans will be split 4 to 1 or at most 2 to 1 for Arnold and McClintock. Since there are 44% registered Democrats to 35% registered Republicans, a split in the GOP will hand the election to Bustamante.

[ArneFufkin]

You'll love Freeper "tame"'s performance on the Michael Medved show today. The replay of his call will be webcast on KRLA 870 at 6:40 pm PST. Just hit the "Today's show" button under Medved's picture. It'll be on again at 9:40, 12:40 etc. as the three hour show loops until showtime tomorrow.

You'll love hearing one of the McClintock unappeasables in voice. LMAO!

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Yeah, I can be serious...this isn't going to be a classic partisan election. To a certain extent Arnold is going to split both the Democrat vote with Bustamante, grab the lion's share of Independents and split the Republican vote with McClintock. He'll get more R's than D's -- with or without McClintock in the race, but the Independents and fiscally conservative Democrats (not fiscal conservative by our standards, but definitely conservative by Democrat standards) will be his margin of victory, if he wins.

Arnold's only going to get a minor slice of votes on the hard right -- some small evidence of that you see right here on these threads. That's true whether McClinock is in the race or out.

Arnold is only threatened by McClintock if the center (his center) is too small to overcome the left. It's hard to imagine any instance where Arnold could cobble together the center and the hard right. Neither will tolerate the other very well -- they're very apart on nearly everything. As long as he stays in the center, he'll only get so many on the hard right anyway, it'll be some but not a huge amount and a McClintock exit probably won't boost those numbers tremendously anyway.

Arnold's salvation has to be in the center...and his people have to be calculating that the center is big enough to do the job for him.