Schwarzenegger’s Double Play
California Governor Schwarzenegger is likely making the speech of his political life this afternoon. His State of the State address will chart a warm and cuddly centrist course that Arnold hopes will win back the wafflers and set a winning tone for his November re-election campaign.
You will remember, I trust, it was exactly a year ago, during his 2005 State of the State speech, that Arnie whipped out a jagged 9 inch Hari Kari blade, thrust into his thorax, and then started madly twisting and bleeding to death on-camera.
The movie star Centrist Reformer morphed before our eyes into a rabid Partisan Zealot and vowed to terminate the political influence of organized labor and, along the way, grant himself expanded powers to confront the Democratic legislature. It was a dumbkopf move that sliced his popularity in half and sparked a tidal wave of protest and political opposition.
So, about 60 seconds after Schwarzie got his ham-sized glutes handed to him in his disastrous special election two months ago, he radically shifted course. With a shit-eating grin on his face, the Gov quickly scurried back to the center. Since then, it’s been all Goodness and Light he’s been beaming from Sacramento: apologizing to voters for not understanding their issues, playing patty-cake with the same unions he had been villainizing, appointing same-sex enthusiasts to his staff and promising to institute an FDR-like infrastructure building program.
In today’s State of the State, the Governor will formally codify his new Girlie-Man strategy. He’s been leaking like a fire hydrant for weeks on end now, says Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag. Schwarzenegger has been drowning us in his re-burnished liberalism:
The scheduled university fee increases have been scrapped; a minimum wage increase, vetoed twice before, will be signed. There'll be more money for schools. A large infrastructure bond program is on the table. There are new revenues for the state. Susan Kennedy, a lesbian Democrat who was Cabinet secretary to former Gov. Gray Davis, is now Schwarzenegger's chief of staff.
Then there’s this odd twist. Who is the Governor bringing in to manage the kinder, gentler campaign he hopes to launch today? Some guy named Steve Schmidt who, frankly, sounds like he’s some sort of Extreme Right-Wing Head-Case! Go figure.
Bill Bradley runs it down on his just debuted New West Notes blog:
Steve Schmidt, a 35-year old East Coast operative who ran spin operations in the 2004 George W. Bush campaign’s war room, is said to be the pick to run the day-to-day operations of the Arnold re-election campaign. Schmidt has a reputation for priding himself on toughness. According to the Newsweek post-election account, he stalked through the Bush campaign war room chanting: “Kill, kill, kill.”
Since those halcyon days, he’s been busy with Cheney, for whom he is counselor and spokesman. There’s been a lot to counsel and spin about. Cheney, as you may have heard, is the hardest of the hardliners in the Bush administration, in the forefront of efforts to defend the Terror War’s pro-torture policies and keep a lid on private White House dealings with the energy industry and on his former company Halliburton’s role in the rebuilding of Iraq.
Schmidt, meanwhile, has spent the last year in Baghdad trying to crank up the Iraqi government’s press operation. Well, he’s going to need that combat training if he’s going to publicly surface as Arnold’s hack. I have no idea which way Congress is going to go in November. But I do know that Royally Blue California plans to remain solidly Democratic. Schwarzenegger can, in fact, be re-elected this fall if he woos and seduces or at least re-assures significant numbers of wary Democrats and skeptical Independents. Bringing in a snarling Cheney Chihuahua is hardly the way to do it.
January 5th, 2006 at 8:46 am
At least when you guys elect a muscle-bound oddball, he takes politics seriously. He also takes it weirdly, but it seems the big oaf is up to something. Is he the leading edge of the Republicans understanding that the way to a liberal’s mind is through his heart? Dessert before supper, maybe?
I’m in a giddy mood – just got an out of the blue $XX,000 donation. Weird, man.
January 5th, 2006 at 8:52 am
I thought right-wingers didn’nt flip-flop.
January 5th, 2006 at 8:59 am
They only flip-flop for tactically wise and morally unreproachable reasons.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:54 am
a snarling Cheney Chihuahua
Perfect word picture; thanks, Marc.
January 5th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Neodude: they don’t call it flip-flopping, that’s all. They quote Keynes: “When the facts change, sir, I change my mind: what do you do?”. Whether the facts have changed or not, well, that’s up to you to decide.
You know what I don’t get: how is it that Republicans win the governorship in CA and MA? Both states have rural/agricultural regions but aren’t the populations there dwarfed by that of the cities (which are, presumably, heavily Democrat)? In MA, Romney is the fourth Republican governor in a row.
Weird.
January 5th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Change is inevitable. The one constant in life on earth. Failure to adapt to change is terminal. Those who refuse to change in the face of new negative evidence are dogmatists.
Arnold lost LA County and the bay area but if you at a map, it’s mostly red in the hinterlands.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Ironically, I was working out at a gym many years ago; when someone showed me a news report stating that Maria Shriver was marrying Arnold. At first I thought it was a joke—how could she marry that muscle-bound putz—but it was true. They were introduced at a celebrity tennis match, and it was love at first sight for her and money at first sight for him. And then as luck would have it for Arnie– a slew of financially successful mindless action/adventure films; followed by a midlife crisis career change into California politics. Who would have thought that greasy mass of testosterone was lustfully looking to become Governor of one of the largest States in the U.S.? Again I thought it was a joke; but the joke was on me—he got elected. So who was it that said, PEOPLE GET THE GOVERNMENT THEY DESERVE!
January 5th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
His movie fans voted him in. They rarely see behind the curtain of illusion.
January 5th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Mark,
To dopey to pull back the curtain—now that’s a superb example of how mainstream news, and “lowbrow†entertainment has “dumbed down†America.
January 6th, 2006 at 5:54 am
All entertainment, no reality, all the time. It’s Disneyland!
January 6th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Marc…this is totally OT (which is where my mind is continually wandering this morning), but weren’t you going to have recurring duels with Michael “Invade Them Faster Please” Ledeen over at PJM ? I really enjoyed that one and looked forward to more (call me perverse and prone to guilty pleasures.) Anything being cooked up ????
January 6th, 2006 at 8:19 am
“Survival of the Richest?â€
January 6th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Right-Wing Darwinists say:
“Survival of the richest.â€
January 6th, 2006 at 10:20 am
CA-Gov: Arnold tries to buy reelection, becomes hypocrite
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/6/2244/53704
Arnold, circa 2003, when an $8 billion budget shortfall was excuse enough to recall Davis.
“They keep spending, spending, spending and when they realize they made a mistake, they go tax, tax, tax. For you guys it’s an addiction. You should go to an addiction place.”
Arnold, today:
A year after picking a bitter fight with legislators that he ended up losing at the polls, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a massive 10-year spending plan on Thursday aimed at winning back Californian support ahead of his November re-election effort.
Addressing legislators in his annual “state of the state” address, the Republican governor proposed $222.6 billion in spending on schools and infrastructure over the next decade that would include a record $68 billion of new debt.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:47 am
This is a misreading of Darwin. “Fitness” only refers to differential reproductive success.
January 6th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Tsk, tsk. Arnold is such low hanging fruit (why does anyone bother?)
Still, to see Eleanore describe him as a “greasy mass of testostoserone” was pretty kewl.
January 7th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Eoo little, Too late. The, solidly Democratic, Legislature doesn’t fear him and the unions still want him out. Watch him crumble and cave on issue after issue. Watch a GOP challenge develop.
On a similiar bright note: looks like Holy Joe Lieberman will get a well-funded primary challenger and backing from Lowell Weiker and some of the Kennedys. And you thought God was dead!
January 7th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Sorry, gang, Arnold won LA County when he was elected in the recall. He was elected as a reformist centrist. He exhibited little if any right-wing behavior if for no other reason that he is not the stupid guy many seem to like to imagine him to be.
That said, he completely screwed up last year, for reasons which I have explained.
This is not the New Arnold we are seeing now, it is the New Old Arnold.
January 9th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
In this speech, Arnold proposed a quarter trillion dollar spending plan on public works, to a big yawn from legislators, who know it’s a non-starter. The L.A. Times’ headline trumpeted the size of the package proposed, then buried the lead, which said the legislature was politely disinterested.
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