Because Will Rogers once said, "Arguing with a fool is like getting intimate with a drunk". Apropos? ;^)
It's always great to hear from the Rockefeller wing of the GOP -- alive and well on FreeRepublic. How many of you actually live in California? As a native Californian, I am so tired of the Rockefeller wing of the GOP -- and here they are: Recourse, Bunnyslippers, Grand Old Partisan, Hildy, Tempst Thune_Banquo
How do you feel about your boy Arnold's refusal to take a no tax hike pledge?
How do you feel about a man who said he was ashamed of the GOP for impeaching wee Willie Clinton and would never forgive the Republican Party?
How do you feel about a man who led the fight for a $455 million government babysitting program?
Anyone who can't see that the Schwarzenegger-McClintock fight is a re-run of the Rockefeller-Goldwater fight in the GOP from the 1960's has little understanding of history or politics.
EVEN THE DEMOCRATS THINK ARNOLD WINNING IS A GREAT IDEA. HERE IS A COMMENT FROM ONE. How do you explain this?
Published by the Sacramento Bee, August 14, 2003
Schwarzenegger: Can it be spelled Rockefeller?
By Matthew Miller
Tribune Media Services
I know, I know - it's hard to imagine that a campaign launched with a reference to a bikini wax can end up elevating political discourse. But the truth is that Arnold Schwarzenegger has an arguably historic chance to transform the Republican Party and thereby shift America's political center of gravity in ways that would paradoxically be good for Democratic goals and great for the country.
This opportunity exists because Arnold is uniquely positioned, and from everything we know temperamentally inclined, to rehabilitate the status and sex appeal of Rockefeller Republicanism. So while he's still a blank slate on policy, let me make the case, in hopes that he and Maria Shriver can be persuaded that this is Arnold's highest use and best destiny.
At the national level, the purging of moderate, problem-solving GOP leaders in favor of zealots for whom tax cuts favoring the wealthy are always the first priority of public life has been a central factor in our political system's inability to address serious domestic problems, from the uninsured to urban teacher quality to countless other issues.
Colin Powell, of course, was the great hope for reviving Rockefeller Republicanism a few years back. But he didn't go for the brass ring.
Suddenly, overnight, Arnold is the one with the wattage and the megaphone to swing the party in the direction he chooses.
For now, we have to read the tea leaves, but the signs are all promising. Arnold can't be a Newt Gingrich fan. He can't be a Tom Delay fan. He's surely a Colin Powell fan. And you can't be married to Maria Shriver and spend all that time in Hyannisport and be a continuous-tax-cuts-for-the-rich monomaniac.
Arnold apparently once told a friend that "he was going to leave the party over what the Republicans did to Clinton" with impeachment - a sign of intelligence and good sense if ever there was one. His investment manager says "Arnold likes paying taxes" - roughly $20 million on $57 million in income in 2000 and 2001 - because it affirms he's making lots of money. And to one of the questions that he did manage to hear Matt Lauer ask the other day, Arnold replied that children should have a "first call" on our resources.
Arnold is said to be getting economic policy advice from Warren Buffett, the Democratic billionaire who's spoken out against President Bush's dividend tax relief and drive to repeal the estate tax.
True, Arnold is also said to be a Milton Friedman admirer. But I'm a Milton Friedman admirer myself, and I'm a liberal 180-pound weakling! You can admire a thinker without thinking that he is invariably the best guide to the policy challenges we face in 2003.
The real key - unknowable at this writing - is Arnold's view of George W. Bush and his domestic priorities. Bush's "compassionate" persona is appealing. But you have to follow policy relatively closely - or at least listen to advisers or to a wife who does - to understand that Bush's "compassion" is a marketing hoax, belied entirely by his budget priorities.
The key to Arnold's ability to transform the GOP and the national debate would be for Arnold to repudiate Bush's tax cuts as senselessly favoring people like himself when the resources should be used for more pressing national needs.
Arnold would have unique standing to say, "You know, my campaign is about California, but I've saved $X million already from the Bush tax cuts, and there's nothing wrong with asking someone like me to have paid the few percent more I paid at the end of Clinton administration - especially when it helps keep the budget in balance and funds programs for poor children."
Importantly, this view is entirely consistent with a call to scrap crazy regulations that hurt California's business climate.
This one move, because of the earthquake and discussion it would generate, would at a stroke reclaim the center of political debate from the rightward lurch that GOP zealotry and Democratic timidity have created. It could alter the dynamics of the presidential race in 2004, and policy outcomes for years afterward.
Will Arnold do it? We'll know soon enough. But as he and Maria and their team debate where he should come down, his potential power for good here is enormous. Democrats may want to hold some of their fire against a recall that obviously never should have happened until all of us learn Arnold's choice.
(Matthew Miller's e-mail address is
mattino@worldnet.att.net. He is author of the upcoming book "The 2 Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love," in bookstores nationwide this September.
© 2003 MATTHEW MILLER
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.