Posted on 09/11/2003 1:09:52 AM PDT by kattracks
In a candid talk with NewsMax.com, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., Arnold Schwarzenegger’s longtime friend, emphasizes what he perceives as the real significance of the unique recall race in that embattled, cash-strapped state:
“The liberal Democrats here represent a real Tammany Hall,” he grieves. “Davis and Bustamante are the puppeteers of the liberal left machine.”
Rohrabacher goes on to explain to NewsMax that he and his fellow Republican U.S. House members in California are by circumstance “immersed” in California politics:
“We know that we must find a way to grow the party in California. Arnold is opening up the dialogue. He is showing a lot of folks that’s its cool to be a Republican in the state. He’s attractive to young Hispanics.”
When asked by NewsMax if his touted 20-year friendship wasn’t coloring his enthusiasm, he admits: “I would call it an acquaintance relationship rather than friendship. I would not really be comfortable in calling him up socially.”
“We’ve talked more on substantive issues rather than personal matters,” Rohrabacher adds. “He has been to my house in Washington for dinner; we’ve had breakfast together in California. He’s been out to my district. I was on the movie set with him – ‘Terminator II.’”
Rohrabacher admits that his affinity for Arnold comes not so much from long acquaintance but rather “from my calculation of what’s good for California.”
“Arnold’s not perfect, but he’s our best choice as a governor with a good conservative philosophy. I agree with him 75 to 80 percent of the time,” he adds.
So why not support steadfast Republican state senator Tom McClintock, Schwarzenegger’s competitor in the race?
Backing the Front-Runner
“I agree with Tom’s viewpoints 100 percent – whereas I disagree with Arnold, as I say, about 25 percent of the time on issues. However, a vote for McClintock will only result in the Davis regime in California continuing.”
You’ve been accused of being an apologist for Mr. Schwarzenegger on your various appearances on Fox and CNN. For instance, you explained Arnold’s reticence to debate to Fox recently:
“By going on talk radio shows and by going out and meeting the people, he actually gets more of a dialogue, and people get to know what he feels more than he does by lining up with six or seven other people.
“When he came to my city in Huntington Beach, for example, he met with about 20 different businessmen just there for an hour, listening to their points of view and having a back-and-forth. That’s much more valuable time than, for example, lining up with these eight other candidates.”
How do you feel about this apologist label?
“I accept that; there’s a good reason for that,” the congressman replies. Rohrabacher goes on to talk about Warren Buffett’s “stupid” comments on California’s Proposition 13 (that puts a ceiling on property taxes), from which he quickly advised the star to distance himself.
“Arnold has substantial convictions,” Rohrabacher continues. “It’s not gotten a lot of play in the press, but about four years ago he agreed to back my school voucher initiative. Now, granted, his support has now gone to more a choice among public schools …
“With Arnold it’s all about his good gut instincts. I know Arnold; he’s not about finding new ways to tax citizens.”
How about other Republican members of the U.S. House from California?
“Don’t know of anyone that has endorsed McClintock. Everyone I know is behind Arnold.”
Disavowing any polls that indicate that the momentum for the recall itself is waning, Rohrabacher steadfastly maintains it’s still at about 60 percent in favor. “The recall will win handily,” he notes with conviction.
As to Arnold’s personal momentum: “One-third of Californians support him right off.” The challenge is to “go higher” by attracting the McClintock supporters, for instance. “They have to come on.”
Arnold’s appeal is not coming from the details but from his basic approach, Rohrabacher instructs. “He’s clearly not a big-government man. He’s unabashedly pro-business, a low-tax guy. As to the details, they will get worked out as things go along – after he is in the governor’s mansion.”
Meanwhile, Rohrabacher, the self-admitted apologist, says he hasn’t bothered to defend Arnold about the current crop of womanizing charges: “No one cares about his formerly wild personal life before getting married.”
Editor's Note:
Do you support Arnold Schwarzenegger? Vote in online poll – Click Here Now
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
California Governor's Race
Okay, stay, but people are wising up. You're now not so much marginalizing our party as you have marginalized yourselves.
Go Schwarzenegger
Additionally, and regarding your quote, you are the one ranting to have your way. I am content with the liberty to vote for Arnold now. You are sorta familiar with liberty, aren't you?
Go Schwarzenegger
The feeling is mutual. You, however, spend much time there, while I looked there 2 years ago and couldn't stand it for 2 minutes.
Go Schwarzenegger
Go Arnie
And buy the snake oil being peddled by McClintock? Fantasy first day punchlist in the Governor's office. Possibly get the car tax repealed, as Arnold would. Other than that, he'll be lucky to get a couple of pencils sharpened.
I don't seek you out...I read your crappy attacks and get angry.
And, as I said in reply there...
You and your Arn-Hole followers do NOT have the right to attack, malign. impugn, and be general boors without having to hear like in kind.
It's a Public forum...deal with it! You all will not answer questions put to you. You are all snarky, and you are right...we would not like any conversation. Because you do not converse...you bluster and blovate without any thought or logic other than "But he can Wiiiin!".
I do not converse with spoiled brat childern well, they bore me as do you unprincipled Arn-Holes.
But when you attack others like me, of charachter and principles and core beliefs for those beliefs, you BET I will defend against such an attack, and will attack back with whatever means are at my disposal within the bounds and rules of FR.
Feel free to ignore, but realize that by refusing to debate issues YOU are the ones who behave like DU'ers, and you do not like that at all. Tough. Life sucks, buy a helmet!
Amongst other arenas of battle is the one where the meanings of "truth", "good", "evil", "duty", "hatred", "vice", "sin", "God", and "virtue" are fought over. As one very smart enemy once pointed out, "It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is."
Now, you may say that McClintock's supporters talk nothing but policy and don't talk much, if at all, about electability. And you may say that without electability there will be no policy changes. Of course, since Arnie isn't advocating much in the way of changes, there won't be any under him even if he were elected.
I personally reject the notion that only left wimpburgers can be elected in California as Republicans. Experience teaches otherwise.
When I was a freshman in college, we had an election in 1964. I was the firs Republican in a verrrrry Democratic family of labor union guys. I sat on the front doorstep of the home of a college friend whose famly was also verrrrry Democratic. He had also become a Republican because of Goldwater. We listened as state after state chose Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater carried his home state of Arizona and five deep South states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. My friend Frank (whose younger brother remained Democrat and became a major state legislative leader of Democrats) and I were stunned by the apparent stupidity of our fellow Americans. We determined that the election of 1964 would not be the pattern of the future in our own lives or in our nation if we could prevent it. Frank left Connecticut to attend college elsewhere and I lost track of him. I became involved with tens of thousands of like-minded young people who hated that 1964 election result with a passion.
That determination of those young people had results across the nation. In California (where I did not reside) Reagan was elected governor after Nixon could not beat the invincible Pat Brown. Reagan was elected only two years after Johnson smothered Goldwater in 1964. Reagan was re-elected by an even bigger margin four years later over Jesse ("Money is the Mothers' Milk of Politics") Unruh. Reagan governed as a conservative in California and nationally. Reagan never accepted the counsels of surrender in Sacramento or in DC. He carried Massachusetts twice and almost carried New York City (and not because they were then more "conservative" than California is today).
Johnson brought in an amazingly leftist Congress and Senate and had all the SCOTUS judges he needed to run roughshod over any constitutional objections to the Great Society fiascoes. If you were not old enough to appreciate Johnson's skills as a politician, read the three volumes of the Robert Caro biography of LBJ. The likes of Art Torres, Gray Davis, Cruz Bustamante, ARNIE!!!!!!, Planned Barrenhood Wilson and their collective ilk are pure amateurs by comparison.
Medicare, Medicaid, Voting Rights Act, 18-year-old voting (with campuses in leftist flames ideologically), an end to poll taxes and literacy tests, voter registration drives designed to serve only the left, massive funding of the "civil rights" movement, funding of radical programs of every description, big backing for Peace Corps as the prep school of leftist politicians yet to come, urban equivalents of same, federal housing programs to stack the central cities with the poorest of the South's rural poor, welfare schemes to make your eyes bleed, the "War on Poverty", transfer of power from the conservative (in Democrat terms) socially Catholic urban machines (such as Tammany Hall) and left change, left change, left change and always more left change so that nothing, absolutely nothing could be taken for granted.
AND LBJ had enemies too. They tended to be from the left as well since he fought (however half-heartedly) a war in Vietnam against Ho Chi Minh and real live communists, thus deeply offending the emerging politburo wing of the emerging Demonratic Party being built on the ruins of a once great populist party of ordinary working people, veterans, people of faith, small business owners, military veterans, union members, etc., etc.
LBJ's enemies believed it a crime against humanity to restrain communists (liberals in a hurry) much less at the expense of postponing the total socialization of the United States. They helped to destroy Humphrey EVEN at the expense of electing Nixon whom they despised more than they now despise Dubya. LBJ returned the favor by consulting with Nixon (with no payment of any kind other than McGovern's devastating loss) and putting Nixon in touch with those who would help him among old New Dealers and foreign policy hawks.
I beg to differ with your history as well. First of all, I don't know where you got the idea that Lafayette was guillotined. The Britannica reveals that one Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, aka, the Marquis of Lafayette was born in 1757, that he secured from Silas Deane a commission as Major General in the Continental Army, that he arrived on July 27, 1777, distinguished himself and was wounded in battle at Brandywine on 9/11/77, fought in the Battle at Monmouth Courthouse, from April to September, 1781, Lafayette commanded the Continental Army in Virginia, skirmishing with Cornwallis and following him to Yorktown, where Lafayette was joined by Washington on land and de Grasse on the ocean to prevent Cornwallis's planned escape to New York. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown on 10/19/81. Lafayette continued to lead an inteesting life in France until his death of natural causes (illness of one month's duration) on May 20, 1834, just short of his 77th birthday. Though opposed to the restored Bourbon monarchy, he was peacefuly in opposition in the Chamber of Deputies at the time of his death.
As to the Whigs and the Federalists before them, their failures to set aside business and monetary obsessions led to their demise. The Federalists virtually disappeared as a political power after two terms of Washington and one of Adams. Jefferson then became, as something of a populist and very much so by comparison to Federalists, the model of American political life. Later, after one term of "National Republican" John Quincy Adams, achieved through a backroom deal with Henry Clay, to stop Andrew Jackson, the next historic realignment occurred as Andrew Jackson, a state's rights populist, won two terms, smashed the National Bank scheme after it had been in place since Washington and refreshed the foreign policy nationalism and domestic policy localism of the Democrats. The Whigs were, to a large extent, hapless and clueless spectators. Lincoln served in Congress as a Whig whining about the Mexican War as an early isolationist prototype. After all, war can be bad for trade. After the Whig Party died a deserved death, Lincoln was elected as a Republican against three Democratic parties (Douglas, Breckenridge and Bell) and the Whigs were already dead as a doornail. Lincoln's motivating issues were the old Federalist and Whig tariff policies and the slavery issue and, above all, the issue of nationalism.
Whiggery, like Federalism before it, was largely based on protectionism, internal improvements, lots of money for their connected business folks, ignoring the constitution as necessary to improve the size of business and centralize economic power. Whigs had little to do with God nor did Lincoln despite his rhetoric. They did believe in the god of "progress", may well have favored property qualifications for voting.
There is much to be said for your second last paragraph but it has nothing to do with Arnie vs. Conservatives. or even Arnie vs. Bustamante. Pournelle may well be right, but it is Arnie who abandons Christ and McClintock who will compromise Whiggery as necessary to serve Christ.
You have less than four weeks to persuade McClintock voters. You probably won't. You certainly won't convince them with the horse race stuff. Your relief will come with McLintock now or McLintock or someone like him later. How long do you want to wait?
The late Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, shortly after the uproarious 1968 Democratic Convention and its attendant anti-police riots, responded to leftist critics by holding a smoldering press conference and saying: "I am have benn vilified. I have been crucified. I have EVEN BEEN CRITICIZED." Try not to emulate "Hizzoner da Mare." Have the courage of your convictions.
Therein lies the big myth. Most true Republicans agree with Arnold about 3.1% of the time, not 75% of the time.
Thanks.
I admit I am not always "civil", but I tend to get that way when pressed.
If anyone's interested, just check out Tamsey's posts to see just how these Arn-Holes act.
Note: Ordinarily it is in bad taste to refer to a FReeper without posting to them, but if you read Tamseys's demands to me not to "ping" her, it's her loss then.
I will, however, reserve the right to respond to her claptrap and drivel when she posts it.
Thanks again.
Hey..my sincere apologies. Enjoy your boys Davis and Dean and Gore.
SFS
I believe you are correct about Lafayette's death, without consulting any sources, as the information comes back to me. As a poor excuse for inaccuracy I can only offer that the French Revolution period always disturbs me greatly when I study it and I start to conflate all the killing. Also I get too excited sometimes and my mind doesn't work well then.
I am sorry in retrospect that I have taken you lightly when you have good gravitas. Your points are well taken. You have nearly convinced me!
My study of the Whigs has mostly been in English history, from the proto-Whigs, Tyndale, the Lollards, the factions in the English Revolution, etc. up to Mill. Really only respectable up to the Age of Johnson. I appear to be lacking in my knowledge of the Whig tradition in the USA. I haven't looked at it after 1776.
I am also beginning to see that I am more a NeoCon than I realized. Thanks for your kind reply. My hostility to the Left has lead me perilously close to very bad manners, at the least!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.