The unappeasables are being purged. Fret not.
First, an important observation. There has not been a genuine conservative movement in some years: only remnants of what was. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, that movement, which had been geared so very heavily to electing him, relaxed, kicked off its collective shoes and started living real life for the first time in about fifteen years. Unfortunately, the movement failed to qualify adequate successors before retiring. Where there had been a rigorous and disciplined ideological movement, there arose a "do your own thing" chaos which has put us in the pathetic position where we are today, as evidenced by the support for the likes of Schwarzenegger on this site and even comparisons of Schwarzenegger to Ronaldus Maximus. We will return to this theme and the history of the movement in defining "genuine conservative" later on.
Pro-life: In 1971 or thereabouts, a fellow whom I did not know but who was prominent in the conservative movement came to the door of my hotel suite at a state Young Republican convention in Connecticut on a Friday evening. He was Executive Director of ACU and is now known as primarily interested in firearms issues, as Executive Director of Gun Owners of America. His name is Larry Pratt. I was busy trying to take control of the state YR group for Young Americans for Freedom. I apologized for being too busy to talk until the convention was finished. We agreed to meet for an extended breakfast on Sunday morning. On Sunday morning I asked what on earth was so important as to detain him from other responsibilities for a weekend to talk to me. He said he wanted me to know and to remember that he told me that religious issues were the future of the conservative movement. I was one flattered law student. I had the impression at the time that being accused of being warmongers, racists, would-be starvers of the poor, anti-booze, and anti-drugs, he was now asking that we also act so as to be viewed as inconveniently holy and (by extension) anti-sex which was not a winning campus issue then or now. We had a very long breakfast. I was not convinced but I certainly respected him. He is an Episcopalian. I am a Catholic and an Irishman with an attitude. He was right. I was not. I have not talked to him in many years but I always pay this ribute to him. I have had the privilege of representing 1100 pro-life arrestees and only about 30 were criminally convicted with definitely minor league sentences due to their militancy not my skills. You are most of the way there on pro-life. Think about the issue relentlessly. No one would prohibit abortion in cases where the mother's actual physical life is imminently threatened by pregnancy. So you are with us on that too though you may not have suspected it. That leaves us with rape. The number of rape-induced pregnancies is miniscule. If you can't come across that particular line, few are going to give you a hard time. My wife says: OK, Fred beats up Susie. Let's kill Betty. That will teach Fred a lesson. Her analogy is to aborting the child conceived by rape. You are, however, a member of the human race. Don't fall for the old Planned Barrenhood line that only women have a say so. Rationality is possessed by both sexes.
Immigration by whatever means: As I think you may recall, you and I agree on Michelle Malkin and the border hysteria stuff. Pretenses as to law and order do not provide an adequate fig leaf for the nakedness of the discredited and disreputable motives behind such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (a sort of Westchester Kennel Club for genetic control of human offspring trying racial quality control over America's future). I did not like the fact that they behaved like that toward my Irish ancestors and I won't sit still for them behaving that way toward Latinos.
Entertainment: We agree procedurally but not on substance. The Romans had a saying: De gustibus non disputandum est. That means: As to matters of taste, do not argue. You could not pay me to listen to rap "music" gangsta or otherwise. Then again, my wife could not pay me to listen to what she and so many others think of as "classical music" (old German composers dead these three centuries composing for a culture alien to my own). I mean there is no a cappella singing by guys from Philly or New York down on the street corner in tough neighborhoods. No Elvis. No Buddy Holly. Not even the Beach Boys. Not Frank Sinatra. Not Nat King Cole. Not even "In the Still of the Night" by the Five Satins. Other than that, I recognize only Church music by Palestrina, or Mozart or Gregorian Chant as classical. I did listen to Howard Stern in his early years on then WNBC Radio in NYC. He was better and a lot funnier on radio. Music is an individual taste as long as you don't play it at warp ten at the red light in the car next to mine in which case, the RTKBA comes in handy. South Park is terra incognita and probably thankfully so but what you watch is your business and none of mine. I agree in taste with the rest of your paragraph and would add the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, James Michener (most of him anyway), Jeffrey Deaver, David Baldacci, John Grisham, and, after fifty-three years starting with Mickey Mantle's rookie year, there is, for me at least, no greater entertainment than watching the perpetual misery of the Red Sox at the hands of my New York Yankees. In short, I don't think we have a problem here other than as to specific tastes and that is no problem.
The banzai charge: I agree on Warner. He was and is a despicable elitist snot and not fit to kiss Ollie North's, ummmmm, boots. There is also just a matter of taste even for hoi polloi. Warner married Elizabeth Taylor to get something like sloppy two hundred and fiftieths or at least her seventh or eighth marriage. Does not class, breeding, trust funds galore, fox hunting lifestyle, hunt country living AND a US Senate seat count for anything any more? Many a twentyish major league bon bon would gladly have worshipped utterly faithfully at Warner's feet or whatever for life to inherit a decent chunk of that wealth. George Allen has one Virginia seat despite Warner's best efforts. We shall look forward to the John Warner seat being someday Republican as well. John Warner is to actual Republican senators as Roger Cardinal McPhoney of LA is to actual Catholics. That havng been said, there is a place for bonzai charges and a place for stealth and guile. As to Schwarzenegger, it is definitely banzai charge time. Some of us are banzai chargers and some are stealth warriors. Some are both. Both are needed. What is not needed is social liberals poaching on conservative turf. That does not mean you.
SCHWARZENEGGER: We very intensely disagree on strategy here. I don't particularly care what the excuse for this recall may have been. The California GOP has been a collectively clueless pack of spineless crybabies since Deukmejian left office. They either believe what Demonrats believe or they wring their hands in uncertainty weeping over the complexity of it all. This is going to take several paragraphs but it will be a somewhat fresh approach.
B-1 Bob Dornan is no longer a Congressman. He managed to lose a Republican seat to Loretta Sanchez who dumped her Anglo married name to run Mexican to defeat him. Bob Dornan spent little or no time in his district for years. He was a LAZY congressman. Now he is a former Congressman. Used food happens. I loved his issues and would have voted for him early and often (my early experiences being partly for an urban Democrat machine). He is not in Congress because he did not care enough to spend time with his constituents attending all the boring crap that officeholders have to attend. It may be boring but it is mandatory as Bob found out the hard way. Then Loretta got her sister elected in another district. What a bunch of brain surgeons. At least, in their own minds, they will not stoop to talk to Mexicans or miss a chance to bash them (not Dornan but many others). They seem to think that an elite mainline or agnostic or atheist WASP majority of young polo players hovers on the horizon and, if they can just hold out for one more election by re-selling their shopworn souls, Muffy and Skipper will multiply and lead to a La Jolla future for California. Their universe, truthwise, is not mine.
Politics, for good or for ill, is class warfare. For modest folks in any constituency, they need not delude themselves that the jobs or the contracts of patronage will be theirs. That is reserved for the VERY well-connected. So policy is what is at stake or recognition or stroking or whatever, at least for the mass of humanity. If my best friend is elected to Congress, a spiffy staff job with a decent and regular paycheck and great bennies will be mine. If I don't know you or your best friend and he gets elected to Congress, you get the job (if you want it) and I hope he votes pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-military, pro-American, anti-tax and anti-spend. If I am not getting the job (which will only come from someone who agrees with me since no one else would be caught dead having me on the payroll to nag), then I better get the policy. When I don't get policy from a Demonrat, I will work harder to defeat the Demonrat. If I don't get policy from a Republican, he better find a new state or country to represent because some things are not tolerable.
If the California recall is about money, that's nice but I am not a part-time participant. I want basic bottom lines. If I tolerate anyone like Schwarzenegger and make believe he is Republican despite his McGovernite domestic and social agendas, I am a fool. Trust me. My mama did not raise fools.
In California right now, beating Arnold is job #1. Without a Republican Party, California has no future. Without social conservatism, California's Republican Party is finished (courtesy of the socially conservative but economically liberal reinforcements swarming across the border). Mexicans do not want their sons and daughters in lavender love nests and they don't want their grandchildren aborted. Any California Republican not up to the task of recruiting Mexicans on the basis of social issue conservatism should save the GOP a lot of long term grief in California by getting out of the party and out of the state.
I would vote NO on recall and for McClintock in the suplementary ballot unless it appears that Schwarzenegger might win in which case I would want to vote for anyone who will beat him including Bustamante. However, as a Catholic, I cannot vote for Doofus, Bustamante, or Schwarzenegger since each cheerleads for abortion. Thus, McClintock is the only acceptable choice among the top four for me personally, as a Catholic. I obey the Vatican not Brook Firestone or Gerry Parskey.
Low tax rates are terrific and quite supportable but phonies like Arnold are not going to give them to you or to Californians. Warren Buffett believes in taxes. Pete Wilson enacted the biggest tax increase in California history. He manages Arnie's campaign and he manages Arnie.
There are areas where government is NOT involved but should be: vigorously prosecuting abortion; making divorce MUCH less attractive; preserving the traditional legal status of marriage as an institution of one man and one woman. This is just restoring the superior status quo circa 1950.
In most other matters, government should butt out. It should get out of the child indoctrination/government skewel business for starters. Think how much that would save in taxes now and later. Flat rate taxes and eliminating corporate taxes are fine goals but not immediate needs. This is my most liberal leaning area. I have no problem with tax subsidies to real heterosexual families (with children). I don't believe that Bruce and Lance should be recognized and subsidized any more than Bruce and Bowser should. I accept the notion that a flat tax on the millionaire at the same rate as a flat tax on a kid flipping burgers at Mickey D's or a struggling family of modest income with no substantial exemption at the bottom is an outrage and an oppression. This is a phony equality. It looks fair on the surface but only serves to calcify the socioeconomic situation in our country. I'll bet you don't mind earning your keep any more than most folks here and I'll bet you don't want others paying your taxes. That's OK and admirable but some folks do need a hand. One of Nixon's smartest moves was his workfare proposal which was related to a negative income tax scheme (a Milton Friedman idea, BTW) which survives as the Earned Income Tax credit for parents and was also a favorite of Reagan. Encourage families to have children. Encourage families not to place them in public schools. Encourage folks to take care of their own elderly rather than putting them in nursing homes. Finding ways to reduce the cost of medical care by getting rid of fraudulent government practices requiring hospitals to bill the clueless insured for the medical care of the clever deadbeats. We can certainly do without government "arts" projects like Mapplethorpe exhibits, Serrano's "Piss Christ" and the ubiquitous multi-zillion dollar Calder iron pipe "sculptures" that dot government landscapes at taxpayer expense.
Grayout Doofus certainly lied about California's finances but the RINOs did not worry about that as they stabbed Simon and McClintock after their social revolutionaries like Riordan were defeated in primaries. As Jack Kemp said: What you subsidize you get more of. What you penalize you get less of. Is it any wonder that we are in the mess we are in? We ought not to subsidize the RINOs who well knew California's finances before stabbing Simon and McClintock last year. They are trying to reverse last year's primary. Defeating Schwarzenegger now will finish him and them. By 2006, California will elect Attila the Right Wing Republican Hun to avoid four more years of Demonrat rule. Then we get it all.
We agree on the War on Terror and the miltary. We are conservatives not neo-conservatives and there is no such thing as an accurately described "paleo-conservative." They are simply devotees of the discredited foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain.
GENUINE CONSERVATIVE: One who has a coherently thought out an ensemble of positions on the permanent things and the issues of our times. One need not meet every litmus test but some are very hard to violate while deserving the name conservative: of these, the pro-life position is very high on the list.
It is helpful to slug these issues out on the Internet. It would be more helpful to have groups of conservatives (those who qualify on most counts and even a very brave libertinian pro-abort or pro-lavender or three) get together in their communities at least monthly and maybe more often---not to listen to speakers but to actually debate among themselves the pros and cons of one debate issue per month, i.e. Resolved that Iraq should be Whacked; Resolved that: No One Can Make a Credible Case for General Abortion "Rights;" Resolved that all Income Taxation Should Be Flat Taxation; Resolved that a Drink Before and a Smoke Afterward are the Three Best Things in the World, or whatever. In the principled clash of debate, issues far more weighty and worthy than "ONLY ARNOLD CAN WIN!!!!!" may be worked out among increasingly knowledgeable, principled and competent friends without the bitterness that prevails on the internet among strangers who disagree. If it works for the Party of the Right of the Yale Political Union, it will work among your friends, especially with good food and drink accompanying the regular get togethers. Dressing in suits or sport jackets and ties for men and dresses or business wear for women is encouraged. I can't control your group from my home in rural Illinois and so civility and imagination will be your job.
Discipline is administered with wit and comity among the regulars. Sloppy thinking is not tolerated. Logic is ruthless but well-intentioned. You become a band of brothers (and sisters) and should, whenever you can agree, wage war upon your mutual enemies with gusto. If you cannot agree after everone's best faith effort to do so, respect those who cannot agree and keep excommunication down to a dull roar. Invite young people and the older folks too. Be loyal and civil to one another. Tell the truth and nothing but the truth, if not every bit of the truth. Keep your commitments (to make you consider them seriously before making them) and enforce the broken commitments of others and punish them for violating those commitments. All things being equal and in the best interests of whatever cause, take care of your own.
In short, you have proven yourself here and on other threads to be a conservative and you have the coveted Black Elk seal of approval as a genuine conservative. That is where you stand with me. We are not carbon copies of one another and need not be but Arnie is beyond the pale and so is Wilson and so is Buffett. Many posting support of Arnie and claiming conservatism here are phonies. You are not. If I seem to have failed to answer you honestly or completely, feel free to extend via private reply.
God bless you and yours.