Posted on 09/02/2003 10:05:05 PM PDT by HadEnough
The Oui Republican Print Friendly Format E-Mail this to a Friend By George Neumayr Published 9/3/2003 12:04:00 AM
Arnold Schwarzenegger, not yet ready to play a Republican on television, planned to duck Wednesday's gubernatorial debate. Here we have the four-corners pampered celebrity offense. Schwarzenegger will only appear at one debate, a mid-September event that gives the candidates the questions in advance. Schwarzenegger can learn his lines for that one.
Schwarzenegger must chuckle at the ease with which he has manipulated this race. He only had to toss a few bones toward Republicans to get them to jump up on his lap. He made vague anti-tax sounds at one press conference and he is suddenly a Republican we can all trust. How many times will the Jim Jeffordses have to burn Republicans before they realize that liberal Republicans always govern like Democrats?
Schwarzenegger's statement that he wouldn't raise taxes unless there is an emergency is hardly reassuring. The state is in an emergency! Does that justify a tax hike? We'll see.
Unless a Republican is explicitly and philosophically opposed to new taxes he will eventually raise them. It is not hard to imagine a Governor Schwarzenegger raising taxes "for the children." His automatic dismissal of cuts to education spending -- he won't even consider them, despite the California educational system's reputation as a bloated bureaucracy and gravy train for hack teachers -- is telling.
It is clear that he has no concept of limited government. True, he says the state shouldn't spend money it doesn't have. But this just implies that it is okay to kick-start the spending once tax revenues roll in. That the state should only perform the few functions the people can't perform for themselves is not an idea in his head, as is clear from his remark that the "children" get first crack at the state treasury. Statists talk about "before-school and after-school programs"; conservatives talk about before-school and after-school parents.
Downplaying his adviser Warren Buffett's pro-tax positions, Schwarzenegger says that both the left and the right are represented in his campaign. Actually, it is only the left and the center. Wilsonites are not the right. Pete Wilson engineered the largest tax hike in California state history. Richard Riordan, another influence on Schwarzenegger, is also an avowed tax-hiker, once saying that "We must be willing to increase the tax dollars for schools. Pulling up the ladders will not be enough to protect us from the crime and the ultimate need for more tax dollars to take care of increasing social problems."
Like Riordan, Schwarzenegger has said that he is "very liberal" about social programs. How will he pay for these very liberal social programs? Social liberals never end up fiscal conservatives, because statism depends upon the financing of fiscal liberalism.
Unless Schwarzenegger grasps that government should only do what the people can't do for themselves, there is no reason to believe that he will govern as a fiscal conservative. Moreover, the social problems he wants government to solve were created in large part by the liberal morality he espouses. The irresponsible ethos he casually discussed in his comically obscene, exhumed Oui interview -- and which he still at some level accepts, as evident from his Howard Stern appearances -- has contributed to the pathologies that drive the expansion of government. Schwarzenegger is a "children's activist" who supports the sexual-revolution morality that hurts children.
If a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual adoption Democrat with a history of group sex were in the race, Republicans would consider that candidate a danger to the commonweal. So why does all of this become acceptable when the candidate has an "R" after his name? What does it profit a party to win and lose its soul? Now we even hear the same Republicans who lamented the Clintonization of politics rejoice that it will spare their candidate further scrutiny.
The race is now down to three candidates -- a liberal Democrat, a Republican with Democratic views, and a real Republican, Tom McClintock. He is a Republican rarity in the state, a politician with a functioning intellect and backbone. So clearly he is not electable. It never occurs to Republicans that this fatalism about conservatives like McClintock guarantees that they will never win. The fatalism fulfills itself. Yes, a half of a loaf is better than none. But if Schwarzenegger wins conservatives will be lucky to even get crumbs.
As Jim Robinson said on August 19th:
Hey, I live here. We're not going to allow California to be destroyed to make a point. Vote the RATs out!! Never give up. Never surrender to a RAT!
He can say anything he wants, because he'll never have to live up to it, and there's little doubt that he knows it.
Indeed.
Feel free to vote Libertarian or Greens, then, or for Tom. It would all be votes for Cruz, who has promised billions in new taxes.
You forget that this recall is about Gray Davis who lied about the scope of the decifit to get re-elected. People are not going to be throwing out one bum to elect another (unless they throw away their vote to Tom Cruz).
Your vote for Tom is a vote for Cruz, and for billions in promised new taxes for the special interests. Please don't ruin the state thusly.
You contradict yourself, saying something I've been saying for a while. While hardcore Demos may poll saying "no on the recall yes on Busta-what was that guy's name again?" they aren't going to be turning out to vote. The threat of Bustmante has been overblown by people who simply want (R)nold, maybe you don't want him, but if you realize that Democrates are going to be in the darken houses, watching sports of dumb comedies on on Oct 7 and taking their mind of the vast right wing conspiracy, they aren't voting "no on the recall, yes on" whatever.
Stop fearing the "n-word" he can't turn out the base, and Mexicans are embarrassed by MEChA Klansman. Its like saying a vote for GWB in the primary before is a vote for...Alan Keyes, because he is going to get all the hard core partisans, and the minorities. Sounds good, but we should know better.
Now that is something you should be very concerned with, not Busta, but Davis. If you push out McClintock, you keep home the base. Otherwise they won't turn out, (I know, they have to vote for (R)nold, but live in the real world for a sec) or even worse, I have people telling me that if its a 2 person race and (R)nold is ahead, they'll vote no on the recall. These are independent people who don't know eachother from Adam telling me this.
It's all about you, I see.
Course they are, they wanna vote on the recall, and they had to register to sign the petition. That was the big deal. Now if (R)nold doesn't give them specifics, they going to get jaded like they were before and not turn out. Their vote is less of a lock than mine if he doesn't give them a reason to vote for him other than Leadership.
You are being too hard on the Mexicans.
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