Posted on 11/10/2006 9:06:56 PM PST by FairOpinion
In his victory speech Tuesday night to a confetti-swamped crowd at the Beverly Hilton, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a message for the rest of the Republican Party after its worst defeat in decades.
Follow "the California way," he said. "We are proving to the nation that there is another way to go, a better path to solve problems."
Schwarzenegger's landslide victory in a largely Democratic state illustrates the growing power of moderate candidates and the electoral appeal of bipartisanship, and it could contain important lessons for Republicans and Democrats as they seek to position themselves in the future, analysts and politicians said.
"If I was a Republican National Committee chair, I would hire Arnold out and teach Republicans what is necessary to put together a winning campaign," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California. "He really is the poster boy of what Republicans have denied for so long. Elections are won from the center."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Everything happens for a reason. We might as well learn the reason.
Reason #1
Voters didn't like the scandals and corruption going on.
Direct association or not is irrelevent. One R successfully tagged with corruption pulls the whole group down.
Reason #2
Conservatives won. Conservative Democrats that is.
Maybe if we can convince the electorate we are more conservative than Dems they will vote for us instead.
Reason #3
Voters want a plan for the WOT
I suppose we have one but Bush never articulated it very well but that was never his strong suit.
No time to complain we have to learn our lessons and if we do we can't lose in '08. =)
The country is becoming more moderate all the time, I don't think a true conservative will ever again be elected to high office. The sooner we grasp what may be a growing reality, the better the chances for winning again...on all levels. I'd prefer a moderate in the "R" direction than the alternative...probably a pretend moderate during the election with a very liberal agenda to pursue once that has been achieved.
And how do the Democrats advance what you claim to believe in? Why do you prefer THEM to Republicans?
And of course what I meant is high natioanl office, they will win on the state level in some states. Although those are becoming fewer now too.
It isn't winning when you adopt the opposing ideals in order to hold power. It's capitulating. Look up the words "Quisling" and "Vichy".
That worked really well in the 90's only the party that got splintered was the Republican Party. No thanks I don't want a 40% Clinton WH again.
"That is, don't get, you know, kind of maybe sidetracked about an R in front of the name. Or a D in front of the name. Don't pay any attention to the R or the D."
--Arnold Schwarzenegger
"Simple. Do you want to win, or do you want to lose?"
Take a deep breath, man. You really need some historical perspective. What wins is conservatism. It's why we took the house back in the first place.
Also, these things are event driven. When the next big terrorist shoe drops (which, unfortunately is sure to happen, sooner or later), the Dems are not going to have an answer that soothes voters. You are over-reacting badly and playing right into the hands of our opponents.
From all accounts, we got beat on a national level on the war and second to that, the "culture of corruption." I would say it began in 2000 when Al Gore gave sway to his spoiled inner child and refused to concede. He set the stage for years of doubt, resentment and conspiracy theories about our leadership, a leadership that suffered a huge public backlash when it asked that same public to endure a war with a nebulous outcome.
Ask Joe Lieberman.
Bear in mind, the US has not won a clear-cut victory in war for more than 60 years. Those people who run congress now are the same people who spit on our soldiers 30 years ago. Their contempt for the concept of a higher duty is now more common. Those higher values are just lies made up to fool silly people like you and me.
Ask John Kerry.
Schwarzenegger doesn't have a nation to defend, a war to run, a stake he must hold despite all the naysayers. I'm sure most of CA would say they're better off with Schwarzenegger than they were with Gray Davis, but Schwarzenegger's challenges are simply not in the league with the apocryphal changes faced by Bush.
Do you agree with Arnold about his "considered" and "erudite" opinion on global warming, and that California should unilaterally invest to combat it, or do you think Arnold was pandering, and didn't have a clue, one way or the other? Do you agree with Arnold that hawking 40 billion in new bonds for this that and the other, was job one, and that those like McClintock who suggested otherwise in large part, as Arnold stated at the end of the campaign, are just clueless troglodytes, who don't understand the salubrious subtleties of debt financing?
"You are over-reacting badly"
Sure, the Dems just took over Congress and you think we should just sit here waiting for them to make a mistake, instead of figuring out what it takes to take power back from them.
The last time they took over the House, they kept it for 40 years.
Read my post 1 again.
That's a good formula for success, in California and perhaps New England. But it's not a good idea in The Heartland.
And your approach is to nominate somebody for our side that is so liberal that I can't tell the difference. Then I'll wind up voting for somebody that I don't share views with either way.
The conservatives are just supposed to STFU and vote for the guy with an R by his name, regardless of whether he'll govern like a liberal?
Are you happy that the Dems won both the House and the Senate?
No, but I also wasn't happy that the Republican leadership was letting the RINO's take control of the agenda. Some conservatives stayed home because the Republicans weren't passing needed legislation like a border fence as a result of the RINOs controlling what got passed. Your view seems to be that what is needed is to move to the left and drive even MORE conservatives away from the polls. Do YOU want to lose more seats in the future?
I will always disagree with political leaders, we all will. If their beliefs mesh with ours on half the issues, it's probably about all we can ask in a country of 300,000 very diverse people...The President we have now and the next one has to be flexible, that's just an obvious fact and Ronald Reagan sure understood it as Arnold now does.
OOPS....300,000,000...Missed a few zeroes, lol!
Told you I'd predict your reply. You didn't even read my whole post, did you?
OK, the bonds, global warming warning, etc, was just clever crude Machiavellianism at its best. It is all about power qua power. I say "crude" because I am kind of an expert on Machiavelli, and wrote an extensive term paper on him back before rocks cooled. He would be laughing his ass off about you. He loathed the disingenuous, the amoral power brokers, and was a genius in getting his message out, without getting himself killed, for those into close readings of his thoughts.
The point I was making is to manage perceptions cleverly. in which Arnold succeeded. Remember, Arnold was declared politically dead after the unsuccessful special election, when he tried to pass conservative propositions. He and his advisors engineered a victorious comeback. That's what the Republicans need to focus on.
Precisely because President Bush has been busy keeping us alive and getting rid of terrorists, he didn't have time, and other Republicans didn't work the "public relations" aspects, and they need to start now for 2008.
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