Arnie was an aberration who could never have gotten through the primary without foisting full conservative colors. Had not the organizers of the recall been neutered he would not even been in the recall. I have serious doubts that McC could have won it, even if unopposed by Arnie, and a demonrat victory over the recall would have brought us even worse demonrat abuses. Arnie tried to foist these conservative colors until his initiatives lost so badly, especially with the rightmost sitting it out. I hope that in his heart he is conservative and 'giving' the left their small victories while stifling the more harmful ones. All I've got left is hope. An aberration, yeah, a Machiavellian aberration, but an aberration no less. His stick won't play in Peoria.
Here is the fact of the matter: in '94 the conservatives gave the Republicans a mandate to reduce government, to ensure our personal liberties, to combat a completely corrupt executive and to restore sanity to the legislative. They had 12 years to do this, but did the corollary occurred. Government grew, personal liberty was further squashed, they displayed their own problems with corruption and the insanity of legislation worsened, by the republican majority legislators yielding power and control to the deceitful and traitorous minority and their allies, the scumbag traitors in the media. Republicans will no longer be able to give the illusion that they are for the aforementioned conservative principles. The general population feels as if they've been 'chumped', and the won't be chumped by them again until something changes. Whether that be our reduction to third world status and our chains becoming even heavier, or the demonratz rapidly self-destructing, I dunno. What is the difference between the pubbies 'chumping' of the populace versus the demonratz constant chumping? The progressive nature of the scumbag, traitorous media for one, but even then their main tool is republican hypocrisy.
Moving to the center is bad advice. Holding to conservative principles, smaller government, cherishing the constitution, less government taxes and intrusion, protecting personal liberty, all without hypocrisy or deceit, (or internal attempts by the base to eat itself from fifth columnist ilk infiltrators), is, in my opinion, the way to go.
My concern is that dealing with the Dem controlled Congress will be extremely hard. If the Republicans and President Bush keep thwarting the Dems socialist agenda in a direct way, the Dems will be yelling for the next two years, how the Republicans are obstructing their agenda to "help" the American people, and the voters will feel they aren't getting enough from the government and it's all the fault of the Republicans. Then the Dems will ask the voters to give them a Dem president so they can renew their agenda "for a great society", free medical care, free... free... free everything, take from the rich, and so on. Then the voters will vote in a Dem president, the Republicans will stay home again, because they will be upset that Bush didn't produce miracles despite of the Dem Congress. Mark my words -- I don't like this, but I am afraid this is exactly what will happen.
Bush will have to work with the Dems and either give them real big major victories, which he is already doing by putting Gates in as SecDef, which in my opinion is a HUGE mistake -- or Bush needs to learn from the Arnold model, give them lots of small victories, but do NOT give in on major important issues. Unfortunately the signs point to the first, disastrous scenario. I am afraid President Bush really believes that "the American people" repudiated his Iraq strategy. With a Republican Congress he could have gone back to a tough stance against the terrorists, but now he can't.
President Bush and the Republicans didn't get their message out: we ARE winning the WoT, there are lots of positive accomplishments in Iraq, the economy is good, unemployment is at a 5 year low, etc. I don't see much change in the Republicans ability to articulate their accomplishments.
The Arnold model is to trumpet "bipartisanship", because that's what the voters are buying, but actually obstruct the Dem agenda on key issues and explain why he is doing it.
I don't think this, and what you propose: "Holding to conservative principles, smaller government, cherishing the constitution, less government taxes and intrusion, protecting personal liberty," are mutually exclusive at all.
Bush can't veto everything. The Arnold model is "have your cake and eat it too". Arnold ran on "no new taxes" and the new tax props lost. Republicans definitely need to resurrect their 1994 "Contract with America" and start running on it now. But they have no choice but to work with the Dems, since they are the majority, as a result of the ilk and gullible conservatives who stayed home.
I said all along -- and some Dems in CA were dumb enough to say it out loud, though nobody paid attention -- that the Dem win strategy was to turn out their based AND "divide and conquer" by the ilk infiltrators everywhere trumpeting the wedge issues to get conservatives to stay home. And this is exactly what happened.
I share your hope and am in substantial agreement with the thrust of your well stated point.
Moving to the center is bad advice. Holding to conservative principles, without hypocrisy or deceit is, in my opinion, the way to go.
We remain, however, adversaries on the mechanism of politics. I do not believe that any political compromise, which seeks to move the playing field to the right, can accomplish that aim by even incremental movement to the left, even temporarily. A move to the left, requires even more energy to get back to the right, frequently more than is available, even with charismatic leadership.
Supporting a traditional liberal like Schwarzenegger, to stave off even more extreme liberal gain is, in my opinion, a bad decision which will bear immediately regrettable consequences. It is very difficult to undue the implications of the tacit approval of liberalism provided by an expedient compromise.