> I really don't understand the fuss. The Democrats are no different than
> the Republicans. Arnold is a liberal Republican, thus making the
> "concern" over his election look like a bunch of alarmism.
Heh, the John Birch Society 'sez..., "Recall Revolution, " by William F. Jasper http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/10-06-2003/vo19no20_recall.htm ...Gorton and Wilson's strategy is simple: Run on image; keep Arnold talking about generalities; avoid discussing specifics; refuse to debate. "This is not a position election," Gorton explained, in response to reporters requests for details of policies that could be expected under Governor Schwarzenegger. "This is a character election. People are looking at character here, they're looking at somebody who will go in and clean house," Gorton told reporters.
Character? Schwarzenegger is a monosyllabic, steroid-stuffed, celluloid action figure who reaps multi-million dollar checks for flexing his hypertrophic biceps and wreaking mindless havoc on movie sets! He is a major Hollywood purveyor of the immorality destroying America's character. How does anyone know whether Arnold can even clean his own toenails or his Humvee's glove compartment, let alone the filth and corruption in Sacramento? Following the Wilson-Gorton game plan, Schwarzenegger has restricted his campaign to carefully scripted platitudes, photo-ops, and sound bites. He has refused to debate the issues or provide even a bare outline of concrete actions he would take as governor to lead California out of its worst-ever economic crisis. In essence, the Gorton-designed message is: "I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger, the rich and famous movie star. I care about you and want to lead California. Trust me."
Seasoned Image Makers
Gorton and his teammates are pros at this kind of game. They not only pulled off electoral coups several times for Wilson, but also successfully ran similar spin service for Boris Yeltsin in Russia and Ion Iliescu in Romania. The Gorton crew transformed Yeltsin and Iliescu, both lifelong Communist thugs, into instant celebrity "reformers." (A Showtime film about the Yeltsin campaign entitled, "Spinning Boris," with Jeff Goldblum as Gorton, is due out later this year.)
Pete Wilson has used his political heft to secure an impressive lineup to endorse Arnold. Attorney Allan Zaremberg, for instance, was Governor Wilson's chief legislative adviser. Now president of the California Chamber of Commerce, Zaremberg succeeded in getting the chambers endorsement for Schwarzenegger, breaking the groups 112-year tradition of refusing to endorse political candidates. Similarly, the Wilson machine has garnered endorsements from the California Farm Bureau, the Western Growers Association, and many of the Republican members of the state legislature and the California congressional delegation.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffet serves as Arnold's economic adviser. Buffet, a liberal Democrat, has been a major campaign donor to liberal Democratic politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Bob Kerrey, and Bill Bradley. According to Buffet, Californians are not paying enough taxes. The super-wealthy stock picker specifically took aim at Proposition 13, which California voters passed overwhelmingly in 1978 in a revolt against confiscatory property taxes. Buffet's attack on Prop 13 riled California homeowners, causing Arnold to backpedal furiously. On August 20th, Schwarzenegger said that as governor he would find ways to cut spending and pledged that he would not raise taxes. However, the following day he flip- flopped and issued a press release stating that he "would consider boosting taxes to mend the state's battered finances and lift its rock-bottom credit rating." He has refused to take the "No New Taxes!" pledge that Tom McClintock has taken.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a liberal Republican, co-chaired ArnoldÃ's September 10th "Education Summit" in San Jose and serves as Schwarzenegger's top education adviser. Another summiteer and education adviser is Arnold's mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, younger sister of John F. Kennedy.
There are many other liberal-left Kennedy influences in the Schwarzenegger campaign. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the country's leading environmental activist attorneys, is advising Arnold on green issues. In 2001, young RFK was jailed in Puerto Rico, along with other Castroite greenies trying to shut down the U.S. Navy base at Vieques. Arnold invited Bobby and his radical cohorts to draw up an environmental plan for California. "Schwarzenegger's environmental position paper is the most detailed policy statement to come out of his campaign so far," reported the Los Angeles Times. Actually, it is about the only detailed policy statement, and it has not circulated widely. "It was fashioned," the Times continued, "with the help of advisors brought in by Robert Kennedy." Those Kennedy advisers include enviro-activists Terry Tamminen, Robert Grady, Buzz Thompson, and Dan Emmett.
Suddenly Arnold started talking about global warming, retrofitting his Hummer to run on enviro-friendly hydrogen, even more stringent air and water pollution controls, and further restrictions on the already- devastated California timber industry.
"You are seeing the influence from other parts of Arnold's world," California Target Report editor Tony Quinn noted, referring to the position paper. "Those views would more likely be associated with the Kennedys." But those Kennedy Democrat views are completely compatible with the views of the Wilson Republicans. Los Angeles Times writers Kenneth R. Weiss and Miguel Bustillo commented on September 7th:
The environment hasn't figured prominently in the platform of a Republican gubernatorial candidate in more than a decade, not since former Gov. Pete Wilson emphasized it during his first campaign in 1990. With a campaign team made of Wilson and several of his former aides, Schwarzenegger is adopting a similar strategy....
The Timesmen noted that "Schwarzenegger's views are closer to those of liberal rivals than of his two Republican competitors." Indeed, Arnold's views are much further to the left than most people realize. Certainly one of the most important liberal-left influences on Arnold comes from his spouse, Maria (Kennedy) Shriver, the NBC-TV reporter/commentator who adores Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton. She let the cat out of the bag about her husband's politics during an interview at the 2000 Academy Awards. "He's not as conservative as you think," Shriver told ABC's Meredith Vieira.
But Team Arnold and the Wilson machine are trying to convince Republican voters otherwise, even as they craft conflicting messages to appeal to voters on both sides of every critical issue. Rep. David Dreier has been tapped to sell Arnold's phony conservatism to California's conservative Republican loyalists.
"Arnold's absolutely a conservative he's a conservative on the issues that led to the recall," said Dreier in an interview with National Review’s John J. Miller. Dreier continued:
If being pro-choice on abortion means you’re not conservative, then he's not conservative. But he’s not running on these issues. He's running [on] fiscal management, the size and scope of government, and the need for leadership.
"He won't raise taxes," Dreier assured Miller. "He is unalterably opposed to raising taxes." But as we’ve already seen, Arnold has back- flipped on that issue and has refused to take the McClintock pledge. Moreover, he has recently sided with Democratic opponent Cruz Bustamante in opposing Proposition 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative spearheaded by conservative black businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly. The measure, which will be on the recall ballot, prohibits the state or local governments from classifying by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin. Polls show that a majority of Californians both Democrat and Republican support this measure. But not Schwarzenegger. "I'm against it," Arnold has declared. "And if the right-wing crazies have a problem with that, so be it." So now the majority of California voters who take a sensible stand against racial profiling are "right-wing crazies"?
But David Dreier insists that Arnold is a true-blue conservative. And National Review assures its readers that Rep. Dreier is a reliable judge of true-blue conservatism. Says Miller:
There's no question about Dreier's conservatism.... When he stumps for Schwarzenegger as he has done tirelessly in recent weeks a lot of Golden State conservatives are probably telling themselves that if Arnold is good enough for Dreier, then he's good enough for me.
That is precisely what the Gorton-Wilson spinmeisters intend. But there most certainly are questions about Dreier’s conservatism. This writer used to attend the Conservative Supper Club and other conservative functions with Mr. Dreier in southern California two decades ago. I walked precincts for him and organized a youth campaign effort that he publicly acknowledged as having given him the edge in his 1986 upset of Rep. Jim Lloyd, an entrenched liberal Democrat. For a few years Mr. Dreier did indeed post a solid voting record, regularly scoring in the 90s on this magazine's "Conservative Index." But then he began to "mature" and "grow." That's how the liberal mediameisters describe conservatives who abandon their principles. Over the past few years Rep. Dreier's "Conservative Index" scores have tanked in the 50s.
In exchange for his infidelity, Mr. Dreier was tapped for membership in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and named to co-chair a CFR-sponsored bipartisan task force on the United Nations. And he has been elevated to the ranks of the GOP elite who redefine conservatism to meaningless twaddle. His main assignment now is to sabotage McClintock.
"I like Taft, but¦"
We are witnessing the replay of an age-old tactic used repeatedly to sabotage conservative candidates and deliver elections to politicians who are Republican in name only. The classic example of this treachery in action was the battle for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination. Senator Robert Taft was far and away the most conservative, most popular, and most electable Republican candidate. The CFR Democrat-Republican elite knew that they couldn't beat Taft by attacking him head-on. So they devised a slogan that would psychologically undermine his support among the party faithful: "I like Taft, but he can't win." By constant repetition of this theme, they caused enough defections from the Taft camp to nominate Dwight Eisenhower, a liberal Democrat relabeled a Republican. As president, Ike implemented the left-wing agenda proposed by Adlai Stevenson, his Democrat opponent.
"I think Tom McClintock is a great guy, but this is a two-man race," Dreier told National Review's Miller. What Dreier means, said Miller, is that "only Bustamante and Schwarzenegger have a real chance of winning. In reality, of course, there's a two-man race within the two-man race, with Republicans splitting their support between Schwarzenegger and McClintock. Will the failure of one of these candidates to get out of the other’s way cede the election to Bustamante?" Guess which candidate must "get out." Not the liberal-left Mr. Schwarzenegger, of course. No, the CFR Democrat-Republican elite turned up the pressure on Mr. McClintock to bow out.
"My hope is that we can be united behind Schwarzenegger," Dreier said. "I am convinced that in the end Republicans will be united."
If Republican conservatives fall for this ploy again, they will have thrown away a historic opportunity for genuine reform and a return toward sanity. It is not likely that they will get another chance like this. A Schwarzenegger-Wilson victory would guarantee a continuation of the suicidal course leading the Golden State toward total ruin.
-- Michael Pugliese