Schwarzenegger to McCain: “My mission is to protect you.”
Uh-oh. More trouble for the Hugh Hewitts of the world, the purificationist ideologues of the conservative movement. They hate McCain and are pitching Romney as the saviour of “the Reagan Coalition,” but McCain is now the frontrunner, Huckabee is still in the race, draining much-needed social conservative support from Romney, who has his own impurity problems, and Giuliani and other insufficiently conservative Republicans are enthusiastically lining up behind McCain — who, by the way, is stridently conservative, whatever the maverick myth, don’t let them fool you.
And one of the biggest additions to the McCain fold is one of the superstars of the GOP, the insufficiently conservative Arnold Schwarzenegger, who formally endorsed McCain today in Los Angeles. I’m hardly an admirer of Arnie the Politician (except on global warming), but it’s probably worthwhile to have him on your side, especially with the huge California primary coming up next Tuesday.
And just imagine how much more enraged McCain’s conservative enemies are. Romney looks awfully small next to the McCain-Schwarzenegger combo. As do the Hugh Hewitts of the world.
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The title of this post is taken from what may be Schwarzenegger’s best movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
6 Responses to “Schwarzenegger to McCain: “My mission is to protect you.””
[...] The Moderate Voice – Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporti… wrote an interesting post today on Schwarzenegger to McCain: â??My mission is to protect you.â??Here’s a quick excerptSchwarzenegger to McCain: “My mission is to protect you.” January 31st, 2008 by Michael Stickings Uh-oh. More trouble for the Hugh Hewitts of the world, the purificationist ideologues of the conservative movement. They hate McCain and are pitching Romney as the saviour of “the Reagan Coalition,” but McCain is now the frontrunner, Huckabee is still in the race, draining much-needed social conservative support from Romney, who has his own impurity problems, and Giuliani and other insufficientl [...]
Replies to Hewitt:
http://townhall.com/blog/g/b4e02163-3028-4793-a…
McCain has problems winning this year:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120173977337730…
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDBhZTJjOG…
http://blogometer.nationaljournal.com/archives/…
That's great the endorsement by the governor who is upset that those free spending Democrats (and Republicans) wouldn't let him add another half a billion dollars to the state deficit each year for the next five years. Plus the minor little problem of being a little short this year, just $14.5 billion dollars, that hasn't been solved yet.
Shoot , we voted for Conan and got Gray Davis on steroids.
DLS – The future of the Repug Party seems to swing with the Moderates like Arnold and Crist in Florida. The Hewitt's can have Mississippi and Lott.
Actually, Rudi, it's a much more broad issue, and a broader problem for the GOP.
People get more conservative as they get older and wiser, as a rule. (Things are more complicated than that in our real world, particularly with the hooking of the middle class on federal entitlements, but the general rule holds nevertheless.) That is why moderates such as I will typically shift rightward where a shift is seen as necessary: it's the intelligent as well as logical thing to do. But conservatism has some problems with it. Inherently, it is seen as negative and defensive (as is Canadian “not-the-USA” nationalism and Quebecois “not-English, not-the-ROC” nationalist sentiment within Canada, and as is France's inferiority-complex-and-US-envy-driven modern reflexive opposition to whatever the USA does or advocates). Conservatism is seen as negativist, defensive, even pessimistic versus how liberalism has been portrayed as optimistic or “progressive” [sic]. This is not helped by our nation's history and a liberal media filled with liberal journalists and editors, who freely substitute their editorialist stances for true news.
What compounds this, perhaps as a consequence of the decades-long rule of modern (interventionist, welfare-state, totalitarianism-skirting) liberalism since the 1930s, is that the GOP is largely dysfunctional. You are probably aware of Detroit's failed city government and a similarly failed government in Michigan. There are numerous examples of failed liberal Democratic policies throughout the Snow Belt or Rust Belt. In its own way, that is what is true about the GOP in general!
The problem the GOP faces is that it has been failing to offer a positive, true alternative to now-dinosaurish liberalism in this country and a vastly, wrongly oversized government in Washington. So often, all the GOP offers is to redirect priorities and spending in Washington rather than properly to engage in a vast “down-sizing” operation not only in personnel but in scope and depth of intervention. The GOP also suffers (made worse by liberal bias in the media) from a reputation as a “closed club” largely beholden to the larger business community and not much else. If you don't fit in, the impression is that you're at best tolerated, not truly welcome.
If you want to use a market metaphor, Rudi, the GOP is a product few want to buy; most who buy it do so holding their nose because the other product is even worse.