Die-hards and the damage done: Hugh Hewitt likens McClintock recall race, Buchanan bid

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Wednesday, September 17, 2003 | Hugh Hewitt

[JohnHuang2]

A picture hangs on my office wall that reminds of the glory years of the Reagan Revolution. It shows the White House team entry in the D.C. Nike Challenge from 1985. The six participants include Dick Hauser, then Deputy Counsel in the White House; John Roberts – newly confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then a young White House lawyer; and me, also a young White House lawyer. The captain of the "White House V-toes" was Pat Buchanan, at the time the Gipper's communications director.

Whenever a visitor's eye turns to the picture, I point to Pat and say, there's the man who put Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only the politically inclined get it: Pat Buchanan's primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush in 1992 bled the incumbent and opened the door to Perot. Perot, of course, put Clinton in the White House, and Clinton put those justices on the highest court.

Buchanan fans sputter a lot when they hear this recounting of history, and many splendid arguments follow. They protest too much, the Pat people do, because of the impulse to disguise guilt with vigorous and emphatic denunciations. Facts, to quote Reagan quoting Lenin, however, are stubborn things. Buchanan wrought what he wrought, and honest accounting requires that the two Clinton appointees be put credited to Pat's legacy ledger. So much for the pro-life platform upon which Pat has long stood. There is no doubt that he sincerely believes in the platform – but there is overwhelming evidence that the unborn would have been far better off had Pat never launched a public career.

This history becomes relevant as the California recall vote draws near. Like Pat, Tom McClintock is a smart, talented and principled public man. Like Pat, Tom is supported by a legion of dedicated, energetic activists. Like the Buchanan campaign of 1992, the McClintock campaign of 2003 thinks it has momentum, a mirage created wholly by an elite media eager to wound a Republican front-runner. A decade ago, that front-runner was President Bush; these days it is Arnold.

And like the Buchanan campaign of 1992, the McClintock campaign of 2003 is playing the role of unwitting pawn of the Democrats to a perfection.

It will not be clear for some years what the real costs of the McClintock candidacy will be. The GOP is already damaged in California, but the real disaster will arrive only if Cruz Bustamante replaces Gray Davis, winning the second part of the California recall with a margin less than the total number of votes garnered by McClintock.

The die-hards ought to think about Breyer and Ginsburg as they launch rhetorical salvo after rhetorical salvo at Arnold. These attacks are very similar in tone and detail to those hurled by the Buchananites against the elder Bush in 1992. Whether they will result in the declaration as unconstitutional of such laws as a ban on partial-birth abortion remains to be seen, but Pat Buchanan clearly didn't set out to destroy such protections with his candidacy of 1992.

But he did. What will the McClintock ledger show a decade hence?

[b9]

YES!!!

[BibChr]

Well-phrased.

(c;

[habs4ever]

Ah, you've caught onto how he operates.Be careful now, or you'll end up being sent to detention without dinner for harrassing and stalking that most wonderful and virtuous of FR posters.

He's a liar and a fraud, in more ways than you know.

[x]

Did Buchanan put Clinton in the White House and Breyer and Ginsburg on the Supreme Court? Hewitt's premise seems to be that one should almost never challenge an incumbent of one's own party. That's a questionable assumption. Probably it would produce more political indifference, servility and compromise than resolve and determination. Sometimes a good primary challenge can be invigorating for a party. It can prepare an incumbent for the coming campaign and keep a strong candidate from getting too overconfident. To be sure, opposition in the primaries can also destroy a weak incumbent.

If the previous President Bush had had more moxie and savvy, he could have swatted off Buchanan's challenge, as was in fact more or less the case. Did Buchanan's candidacy alert Perot and the Democrats that GWHB was vulnerable? Maybe, but if so, it was also an early warning to the Bush people. Would it have been better to discover one's weaknesses in October, rather than in February? The challenge got the Bushites to buckle down early, and that may have been a good thing, though it wasn't enough in the end.

In 1968, Eugene McCarthy's challenge doomed LBJ. Nixon swatted away two primary challengers four years later. A President who is -- or looks -- strong can do that. One who's weak can't. There are two sides to the question, so I can't say for sure. We ought to look at Kennedy's campaign against Carter in 1980 and Reagan against Ford in 1976. Did they doom the standard bearers to defeat? And was it worth it for conservatives to bring Ford's defeat if it cleared the way for Reagan in 1980?

Of course, what makes the recall election different is that there is no primary. McClintock and Schwarzenegger are competing directly against each other. The usual steps are skipped, and perhaps Californians will change the procedure after the election, if the result looks chaotic.

[EternalVigilance]

Something Schwarzenegger IS NOT doing.

Calling conservatives idiots and right-wing crazies is a surefire campaign ploy to win support...great tactics...

Sheesh...

[RonDog]

I have no idea who this Hugh Hewitt guy is, but he is definitely not one of us.

Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated "center right" conservative talk radio host, and a good FRiend of this forum.

Hugh's aggressive promotion of Free Republic is the main reason that many of us (including ME) are FReepers today.

For extensive documentation of Hugh's long-term support of Free Republic - since well before the Florida Fiasco in 2000, see also an old, but still relevant thread about him:

HUGH HEWITT and Free Republic: How should we help him help us? [Who **IS** this guy?]
			Posted by RonDog On 10/20/2001 5:27 PM PDT with 130 comments Hugh Hewitt confirms his NEW radio station list: NEW times, cities, call letters ^ | 10/20/2001 | RonDog

[BibChr]

Sheesh yourself, because when he lauds Reagan and praises conservative principles, you just call him a hypocrite and a liar.

This is what hatred looks like.

Fits my view of him perfectly. He's a mixed bag. Some of his views, I loathe. Some I embrace.

But there's no rational denying that what's known of him is better than what's konwn of your man Bustamante.

Dan

[EternalVigilance]

Bustamante is far from 'my man', as you well know.

[Luis Gonzalez]

LOL!!

Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

[RonDog]

Calling conservatives idiots and right-wing crazies is a surefire campaign ploy to win support...

...from the INDEPENDENTS, and moderate DEMOCRATS who are terrified of voting for the "conservatives" who have been demonized so effectively in the media here.

There are a lot more of THEM in California than there are of US.

By attacking US, Arnold is reassuring THEM that he is not as bad as they fear him to be.

[BibChr]

You, McClintock, and the scorched-earth subset are Bustamante's best friends and only hope.

As you well know.

[BibChr]

<< LOL!!

Have you stopped beating your wife yet? >>

LOL! No need to start or stop, he's too busy beating up on the Republican frontrunner and most conservative candidate who can win in a state he doesn't even live in!

LOL!!

[EternalVigilance]

;-)

[Luis Gonzalez]

"It was about integrity."

"Integrity"?

Want to talk about spin?

You're making the case that in the name of integrity, the "base" helped re-elect Bill Clinton, you must have seen him as a viable alternative to Bob Dole.

It was a powerplay, and everyone lost because of it.

That kind of integrity got us more tax raises, and eight years of Bill Clinton.

To paraphrase an old adage, the road to Hell is paved with the kind of "integrity" that was supported by Perot voters.

The "base" is that which supports the structure at all times, not just when it suits it.

The base are the voters that do not leave.

The "base" was most certainly not the ones who abandoned the battlefield and left the fight to the rest.

[EternalVigilance]

By attacking US, Arnold is reassuring THEM that he is not as bad as they fear him to be.

Ah, I see. We're Arnold's whipping boys so he can pander to the Left. Gotcha. Wonderful.

[EternalVigilance]

The "base" was most certainly not the ones who abandoned the battlefield and left the fight to the rest.

You've put your finger on exactly why this article made me so mad. There are many of us who fit your description of 'the base' perfectly, who are now being demonized out of hand and being slimed with the same brush as Buchanan. All because we believe that the candidacy of AS is going way too far. So far that are not able to support him.

This candidacy is a disaster for the GOP.

[RonDog]

This just in, from www.NationalReview.com:

	Send to a Friend Print Version

Topic for Sept. 17, 2003: Should McClintock Drop Out?, Part III Read Part I, Part II.

Hugh, you're so skilled at unfurling a phrase — responding to the delay of the recall on your website the other day, you got off the best line I saw anywhere, expressing your hope that the Supreme Court "knocks this [Ninth Circuit] panel so hard their teeth end up in Hawaii" — that you've almost won me over. Almost. The 90 percent of conservatives in the California legislature whose opposition to McClintock you cite? Our friends Chris Cox, Dana Rohrabacher, and Dave Drier, all of whom endorsed Schwarzenegger — all of whom, indeed, rushed to endorse Schwarzenegger? I can't escape the feeling that they all find Tom McClintock a little…hard to take. Tom McClintock is cocksure, sharp-tongued, and opinionated. But I write this in a hotel room in New York City, a town that just a decade ago found itself in as big a mess as the one California confronts today. Who turned New York City around? A nice guy? A sweetheart? A puffball? No. The cocksure, sharp-tongued, and opinionated Rudy Giulani. Sometimes it takes a guy with an edge to get the job done. Yes, Ronald Reagan did often say, "Facts are stubborn things." (That was his own line, by the way, not one written by us speechwriters.) But Ronald Reagan was a stubborn man. In 1976, you'll recall, Reagan lost five primaries in a row. Eleven former chairmen of the RNC, the National Conference of Republican Mayors, and one Republican governor after another called on him to withdraw from the race. Then, in North Carolina, Reagan won an unexpected and crushing victory, turning his campaign around. True, in the end he still lost the primary fight to Gerald Ford, if narrowly. But he transformed the GOP — and laid the groundwork for his own victory in 1980. I say it again: Politics is open-ended, contingent, and malleable. Should McClintock fight on? The Gipper himself would have done no less. — Peter Robinson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and host of Uncommon Knowledge on PBS, is author, most recently, of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. Robinson is a frequent contributor to NRO's weblog, "The Corner."

Peter is a writer. He dreams dreams. He sees visions. He enjoys crusades. Although I host a radio show, I remain a lawyer, with a lawyer's disposition. When Peter and I officed next door to each other in the Reagan White House (actually the OEOB), his office is where music played and debates raged. The conversations were high-minded and the authors quoted were philosophers. Through the Counsel's Office next door, on the other hand, came boring reality — the stuff of legal documents and FBI background files on the way to the Senate, financial disclosure forms and cease-and-desist letters outbound to abusers of the presidential seal. Our mindsets, then, are different. The training has little in common. Which explains how Peter could write in yesterday's installment: "What are the Arnoids so worried about? A few absentee ballots may get cast for McClintock that would otherwise have been cast for Schwarzenegger, but very, very few." Peter cites an estimable authority for this disarming aside: John Fund. I agree that John Fund is an excellent authority on the recall. But again, we lawyers tend to worry about details. We distrust expert testimony that appears to contradict inconvenient facts. Such as the fact that 31,000 absentees had been received in four northern counties by Monday, and another 30,000 in Los Angeles County alone. Let's take the best number for Tom that has been seen in any poll: 18 percent. What is 18 percent of 61,000 votes? If we use the number that Tom's fans are using, it is possible that around 11,000 McClintock votes may have already been cast and more streaming in by the day. But Peter is not concerned over "a few absentee ballots that may get cast for McClintock that would otherwise have been cast for Schwarzenegger?" More absentees votes are being cast every hour of every day between now and October 7 (assuming that's Election Day) than made up the total difference in votes between Bush and Gore in Florida in 2000. Peter and John are two very smart guys, and perhaps we ought not to worry. After all, Tom's real support is closer to 10 percent, so its only 6,000 or so wasted votes thus far. And Florida was an anomaly. It couldn't happen again. But even the 6,000 votes bother me. Do you recall the agony of November and December 2000, where shifts of a handful of votes mattered? It seems to me that people asking us to take Tom McClintock seriously have to themselves take Tom McClintock seriously. His candidacy is bleeding real votes from Arnold, votes that could give the state to Cruz Bustamante, and by doing so, post a huge opportunity cost in the GOP debit column heading into 2004. The speechwriters used to hate when their work would be routed all over the White House for commentary, and it was often absurd to have non-writers flyspecking the beautiful prose and sometimes poetry of Peter and his able colleagues. The lawyers were especially a pain in the neck. Always nagging about the details of this or that line. Raising stupid, time-consuming questions; nitpickers every one of us. Perhaps this is just more lawyerly nitpicking, but there seems to me to be something substantial about 6,000, or 11,000, or many more thousands of votes. Yes, I am worried. Who, who wanted to win, wouldn't be? Eventually the McClintock supporters have to confront the fact that they may be giving California over to Cruz Cruise. Is that worth the fun of the McClintock campaign? — Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and author, most recently, of In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition.

[Sabertooth]

You keep looking at the downside. You don't see ANY positives to Arnold getting into the Governor's mansion over Bustamante?

Would you characterize these statements by Schwarzenegger as positive?

"Proposition 187 has been resolved by the courts. It is time to move on. More than 2.3 million undocumented immigrants currently live in California. They cannot continue to live underground. I will work with federal officials to address this problem."
Schwarzenegger campaign website - joinarnold.com


Said Proposition 187, the 1994 measure that denied many services to illegal immigrants, was "history" because it has been largely voided by the courts. He supported the proposition at the time voters approved it. "Now we have to move forward with the whole thingand to look at it, what we're going to do with all the people that are undocumented immigrants here in this state. What should we do? Should we have them to stay here, which I think is the right way to do, but how do you then include them in our society, how do you make it official, how do you make it legal?" he said. He added he would try to team up with other states with large immigrant populations and lobby the federal government to address the issue.
Associated Press - August 27th, 2003


Schwarzenegger criticized Davis for signing a bill granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, saying, "We're leaving ourselves wide open to terrorism." And he repeated his support for a guest-worker visa program -- "then they can (get) driver's licenses hooked together with insurance."
Sacramento Bee - September 9th, 2003


Schwarzenegger said he opposed the bill because it would "bring danger to our state" because it doesn't require background checks of illegal immigrants.

He did, however, say he supported proposed federal legislation that would help those in the United States illegally become legal residents more quickly.
Sacramento Bee - September 17th, 2003

If it wasn't clear before, a vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger is a vote to Amnesty Illegal Aliens.

It's hard to imagine anything worse than a Republican pro-Amnesty for Illegal Alien California governor. Every Democrat Presidential candidate except Al Sharpton and Wesley Clark is thus far in support of Amnesty. If the Republicans don't oppose it, who will?

[RonDog]

Ah, I see. We're Arnold's whipping boys so he can pander to the Left. Gotcha. Wonderful.

You got it.

Welcome to the political Hell that we call California. :o)

[Southflanknorthpawsis]

Bravo for your post #5........so very, very well and succinctly stated.

Thank you.