(Cross-posted to MyDD, dKos and My Left Wing. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

With the recent launch of the California Majority Report, I returned to the idea of what the meaning of what it really means to have a blog, to write a blog, and to be part of a group blog.  What is a progressive blog? But more generally, what is a political blog?  To me a political blog has a purpose more than just to inform.  It has a goal in mind of moving political goals forward.  Some are focused on plain and simple electioneering, some on issues, but they have a purpose because they have a somewhat consistent message.  This is even true of the Daily Kos, where there are a wealth of different opinions.  dKos is attempting to further Dem politics by building and motivating grassroots activists. It’s a model that can be successful for a blog because there are so many grassroots activists out there that it can appeal to.  It’s the model that I based Calitics on precisely because I wanted to help develop progressive grassroots infrastructure in California.

But let’s digress into some of the specifics of this new site, the California Majority Report. First, the technical aspects.  First of all, it appears to be based off of a WordPress install.  However, somehow they managed to mangle WordPress so badly that it’s a ridiculous pain in the ass to leave a comment.  It took me about 7 hours to set my user name up.  What can a computer do in 7 hours that it can’t do in 7 minutes, or 7 seconds? Who knows, but that’s how long it took me because the email took that long to arrive.  And even when I got my password, the site seemed to have some problems logging me in.  Oops! Additionally, I don’t want to harp on the design itself, but I will point out the fact that it’s amongst the ugliest WordPress blogs that I’ve ever seen.  Oh wait, that’s harping isn’t it?  My Bad.

I ask the question that is in the title of this post because the “contributors” of the California Majority Report seem to be working at cross purposes.  To flesh this out let’s compare this site to several others on the Internet.  Follow me to the flip…

First, as the site seems to want to be compared to Jon Fleischman’s Flash Report, let’s do that.  First, I will note that by continually comparing themselves to Jon Fleischman they are giving this man some sense of credibility which he does not deserve.  His business model is only successful because Republican insider advertisers (with whom his readership is already familiar) have elected to pay him ridiculously high ad rates, as a sort of wingnut welfare.  (Ironically, Flash Report was for a long time also subsidized by Fleischman’s income from a taxpayer-funded job as the PR flack for the Orange County Sheriff.) Fleischman should be ignored as much as possible.  It’s hard enough trying to deal with conservatives like Schwarzenegger without dealing with Fleischman.  Currently, the man is in a state of mourning over the minimum wage deal.  (My God! You mean these poor peoople are going to make more money! And then they will spend it all! And it will pump more money back into the economy creating more jobs! ….Oops, I guess he didn’t really say that, that’s just me I suppose)  I suppose Jon never read Card and Kruger’s Myth and Measurement.

But back to the Flash Report, Fleischman has several contributors from around the state, some with slightly different perspectives.  But the one consistency from the Flash Report contributors is that they are all unapologetically conservative.  They occasionally have their disputes with the governor and other elected Republicans, but almost always from the Right.  In the CA-50 Special Election it was Fleischman championing Eric Roach to run.  And the message from the FlashReport was clear because of Fleischman’s iron grip on the site.  It’s his site, and everybody else is just allowed to play in his sandbox.

But as much as the publishers of this site seem to have wanted to copy the Flash Report, they only went halfway.  Their messages come from both the Left and the Right of the Democratic Party.  Would Garry South agree with Chris Lehane’s suggestion of taking a position on pulling the National Guard out of Iraq?  I tend to think no because of South’s vigilante war against all that is progressive in his Lieberman ’04 Presidential campaign and the Westly ’06 Gubenatorial campaign.  And there’s no Fleischman to give the site an overall direction in case of disputes.  The site seems to be insider for insider’s sake.  And while I’m sure that many insiders will read and appreciate that, I predict a lot of difficulty attracting more than a handful of readers outside the Sacto bubble.

And while I’m on the topic of Garry South, it appears that he once he bashes Phil Angelides once again. (This song and dance is getting tired.).  He’s also joined this time by Jude Barry, who throws in some Ned Lamont bashing in for good measure.

If California voters forgive Schwarzenegger, like Connecticut voters seem to be forgiving Lieberman, for the sin of supporting an unpopular president and a disastrous war, it will result in the re-election of an incumbent and prove that voters, like moviegoers, love sequels. (CA Majority Report 8/23/06)

This is the stuff of a man who doesn’t really know Connecticut and hasn’t been really following the Lamont race.  I don’t blame him for that, but if he was, then he’d have known about Lamont drawing within the margin of error in the most recent polls.  But that’s all secondary when you can give the man who defeated you a good push towards the cliff.

Now, I’m inclined to cut Barry some slack, mostly because of his Howard Dean work in 2004.  South, on the other hand gets no slack at all.  He’s had his time and he’s shown his true colors with the Davis campaigns (can you triangulate any harder than those campaigns? ), the Lieberman ’04 campaign (Oh, yes, it seems you can triangulate harder)  and then with the ridiculously jaded no negative campaign pledge that he pushed Westly to issue even as South was lashing out with attacks on Angelides through press releases, press conferences and interviews.

Another site that is worthy of comparison to this site is Frank Russo’s excellent California Progress Report.  Frank writes an informative site that dishes out a perspective that is consistently progressive, but in the voice of a number of different speakers.  His editorial control on the site makes him an excellent progressive website.  The site actually drifts more towards hard journalism than most blogs and would probably best be described as a California progressive news site with the inclusion of a comment feature.  Frank’s consistency in perspective and his knowledgeable policy analysis make it a valuable resource for California public policy that is accessible to all.

But the California Majority Report is clearly not a policy analysis site.  It features little analysis on policy at all.  The closest it comes is an interesting post by Bart Broome, a Mark Leno staffer, about the universal health care bill SB 840.  Other than that bill, everything else seems to be insider-ish to a whole new level.  A level which I previously thought impossible.  And that could be valuable, if it wasn’t merely for its own sake. The question which was featured on the page, “How can Phil Angelides win” was taken by Barry and South as to be just another opportunity to bash Phil without actually answering the question.  And while John Whitehurst makes some good suggestions for the campaign, not one of the contributors offers something that can be accomplished by somebody other than an insider.  If this site is directed only at insiders, why not just put up a newsletter in the capitol building?

That is not to say that all of the posts are of poor quality.  Some of them are very interesting precisely because they are from insiders.  Some are well written.  One example of both is a post by Steve Maviglio, one of the main publishers of the site, entitled “Some Notes From the War Room.”  It’s actually an interesting recap of the media bias towards Schwarzenegger as we approach the election.  One salient example from Steve’s post:

The New York Times ran a lengthy editorial praising Schwarzenegger’s faux support of greenhouse gas emissions, noting that he had signed legislation in 2002 authored by Democratic Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, putting on the books the nation’s first greenhouse emissions law. The Grey Lady refused to run several letters-to-the-editor that were submitted that noted the law was actually signed by Governor Gray Davis, not Schwarzenegger. Only days letter did it bury a correction of the facts.

That’s a good blog post.  It gives us some concrete examples of the issue i n an enlightening and conversational manner. Plus it bashes the media, always a common enemy of blogs.  I like it, but ultimately there’s not enough at the site to make it worth it for more than few dedicated California politicos. 

What could help this site become a blog?  Well, there are many ways to go, some of which directly contradict others.  First, exercise more editorial control.  Who’s site is this?  Is it Salazar’s? Maviglio’s? Or is it their hired hand’s site? I don’t know, as it’s hard to tell from a reading of the site.  The lack of editorial control leads to a lack of editorial direction.  I don’t know if this site is supposed to be helping Democrats get elected or if it’s just supposed to be an entertainment site, something like a defamer for Sacto pols.

The other suggestion I would give is to reach out to the grassroots and netroots.  With the exception of a few limited contact, the founders of this site made little effort to market this to what I expect is their target audience.  Oh sure, they did a great job if they were going to start up a rival to the Capitol Weekly, what with the press availability and the fancy insider party.  But if you want Internet readers, perhaps you should attempt to have an Internet outreach and Internet campaign to publicize the site (maybe even the most basic step of a blogroll so that you participate in the liberal blogosphere’s link economy).  Not to be unpleasant, but when political professionals fail to reach out to the single constituency that they say they’re trying to reach, it causes one to doubt their skill set generally.  Especially when the people that make up that constituency are among the easiest people on the planet to find and contact.  At any rate, that didn’t happen and they elected to use only traditional media for their launch campaign.  Oh, and Fleischman.  So, CA Majority Report, get to work on doing some serious connecting with the ‘roots.

So, back to my original question.  What is a progressive blog?  Well, this certainly is far from progressive, and it could use some help on the blog side too.  Perhaps it could benefit from a few less voices, especially some of the voices that have proven to be toxic to the Democratic Party. But, I’ll reserve judgment before heaping scorn upon the actual concept.  It needs some work, but perhaps it could become a resource. 

LA Times columnist George Skelton is too, um, demure to say it, but Arnold is LYING about Phil Angelides’ fiscal proposals. Here’s Skelton on The Panderer at last week’s California Republican convention (emphases added):

“Our opponent wants to raise your taxes by at least $18 billion. He wants to tax virtually everyone, everywhere. He wants to increase the car tax, the sales tax, the property tax, the farm equipment tax, the income tax, the alcohol tax, and he even wants to tax you when you go and get a tune-up for your car. Our opponent has never met a tax he doesn’t like or a tax he won’t hike.

“His message to us is more taxes. Well, here’s our message to him: We say no to more taxes. No to more government spending. No to more government control.“

Dissecting this political perjury: Angelides clearly is not advocating an increase in the car tax, the sales tax, the property tax or the liquor tax – or imposition of a new tune-up tax. He is leaving open the possibility of repealing the five-year-old sales tax exemption on farm equipment, depending on the recommendations of his loophole-closing commission. And his only income tax hike would be on the likes of himself and Schwarzenegger.

As for government spending, it has risen 26% under Schwarzenegger. And his pledge of no more government control? He’d better stop trying to negotiate legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Arnold, YOU ARE A LIAR. Since George Skelton won’t say it, I will.

And Phil Angelides needs to say it. Loud, and often. Angelides needs to call bullshit on Schwarzengger’s outright LIES, and draw a clear line connecting Schwarzenegger’s blatant, demonstrable lying in the course of a campaign, and the dishonest way he has run the state.

Schwarzenegger vowed to go to the people of the state to get his initiatives passed last November – and The People handed him his ass. So, now what does he try to do? He ignores the clearly stated Will of The People and tries another end run, by, among other things, supporting Proposition 85, a bastardized version of Proposition 73, a law which would limit access to abortion, that was soundly defeated last November. He’s pandering to the fundamentalist portion of his base with that.

Schwarzenegger won’t support Proposition 89 – gee, I wonder why?? – the campaign reform measure that would help clean up government and get rid of the pernicious effects of special interests in California politics – the same special interests that have plunked down big money to Schwarzenegger’s campaign, and from whom Schwarzenegger loftily declared he would not accept money during his 2003 campaign when he unseated then-Gov. Gray Davis.

He lied about that, too.

Note to Phil Angelides:

PLEASE CALL ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER A LIAR.

Because he is one. And voters will understand that.

Then, Phil, you can tell people about Schwarzenegger’s stances against alternative energy (Proposition 87), in favor of Big Tobacco (Proposition 86), and against abortion rights. And you can give them some more facts about your proposals, like:

“There are 46 profitable corporations doing business in California with $1 billion or more in revenues that pay no corporate income tax,” he said. “I don’t think that’s right.

“I don’t think it’s right that 18 corporations can set up phony mail boxes in Bermuda, the Bahama Islands or Cayman Islands and escape state taxes. But the tax code is like a Swiss cheese, a privilege for those who have lobbyists and accountants who crawl the halls of the Capitol.”

Facts work well against Republicans, Phil. Especially against world-class pandering liars like Schwarzenegger.

(Also available in Orange and at My Left Wing)

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-11, CA-04, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Proposition 89, redistricting, health care, minimum wage, reform.

Governor’s Race

• Dan Ancona on Phil.
• Two new TV ads from Angelides’ team: one showing Schwarzenegger’s ties to Bush (see also this campaign press release, courtesy Randy Bayne), and one on Angelides’ support of the middle class.
• Julia has a quote from a Steve Maviglio piece concerning the Schwarzenegger team’s Bush/Cheneying of the press and some comments thereon.
• Bill to give one-time bump to minimum wage passes in election year, after Schwarzenegger threatens veto of indexed minimum wage. Angelides would support indexing, just like we do with the tax code. Great Analysis from Frank Russo.
• Even Daniel Weintraub has grudging respect for the Angelides budget plan. Julia has the commentary.
• Not entirely relevant, but amusing: Schwarzenegger in “Carnival in Rio”
• Schwarzenegger: Always willing to pander to the hard-line Republicans, but without the strength of his convictions in an election year.
• Schwarzenegger on Health Care: No plan, not now. Too hard. Maybe next year. Watch me pose.
• It’s election time, so Schwarzenegger pretends to care, unless you’re an extremist Republican, and then he really does care as long as nobody’s watching too closely.

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Veterans for McNerney
• Down With Tyranny asks why the DCCC is not helping either Jerry McNerney or Charlie Brown.
• It’s election time, so Paid-For Pombo pretends to care.
• Paid-For Pombo: Rubber-Stamp Bush Republican.
• Defenders of WildLife has a couple ads in the district. They’re really pretty good.
• I recently said to a friend of mine that the last 6 years could be described by the phrase: “I could not make this shit up.” Paid-For Pombo’s response to the massive oil pipeline leak on Alaska’s North Slope was to advocate for more drilling and fewer regulations. I could not make this shit up.

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

• If 15% Doolittle thinks stem cell research is immoral, will he pledge never to use any of the results? Well, even if he did, since when can you trust him?
• 15% Doolittle: After a sudden change hits a forest, the FIRST thing you want to do is rush in the clearcutters!
• Dump Doolittle raises a good point: when you’re focused on raking in the bribes and doling out the pork, you don’t do a very good job at anything else. Tough talk and wrapping yourself in the bloody flag does not make the country safer.
• Dump Doolittle has a great series of LTEs: One, two, three, four and five, six, seven, eight.
• 15% Doolittle: Corrupt or ineffective? Don’t worry, it’s an inclusive or.
• 15% Doolittle flips the bird to our planet.

Health Care

SB 840, a plan for universal health care, is coming up for a vote. This PowerPAC contribution explains why it’s important and has a link for you to contact your rep.

Propositions

The Prop 89 folks are having a blast showing why clean money is necessary.

Reformalicious

• Debra Bowen continues to do good work on voting integrity. Let’s get this woman elected to Secretary of State. And throw her some cash.
• D-Day on the bill trying to make corporations report all of their income to California, instead of hiding some. Will Schwarzenegger sign? More here.
• Bill Cavala on redistricting.
• D-Day has an interesting post up about possible voting and electoral reforms.
• Frank Russo has a great summary of the bill currently making its way through the legislature to kickstart a national popular vote for president.
• This came up in the context of a coordinated fear campaign by the Schwarzenegger team, but why exactly is Prop 13 a good idea again?

The Rest

• Badlands Journal has a great long piece up on water politics and policy in California. Whiskey’s for drinkin’, waters for fightin’ over.
• Randy Bayne (nice new theme on his blog) on the minimum wage bill.
• D-Day on Monet Politics: bills that look good from election-distance, but are really not all that impressive up close.
• Mmmmm, Burritos.
• A bill to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the verboten grounds for discrimination in California’s schools is slowly wending its way past the Republican bigots in the legislature.
• Endorsements for SF residents: Rescue Muni, and the SFDP.
• Sheila Kuehl on resources and the environment in the 2006 Budget.
• s9 at the MojoWire on the coming housing crunch.
• SoHum Parlance has some genuinely interesting thoughts on the Humboldt County marijuana industry.

(cross-posted at The Courage Campaign)

Last Thursday, dday wrote a great post over at GovernorPhil titled Arnold And The Traditional Values Coalition. It quoted an LA Times article that told of an unholy alliance that had formed in Sacramento.

Meanwhile, to drum up support for Schwarzenegger among evangelicals, the state party has hired Ben Lopez, a lobbyist for the Rev. Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition, a group that seeks to outlaw abortion and roll back gay rights.

Lopez and Anna Bryson, statewide coalitions director for Victory '06, the party's November election operation, plan to meet next week in the Sacramento area with roughly 200 conservative ministers — the first of several such gatherings to promote the governor, Bryson said.

The Traditional Values Coalition is no ordinary conservative group, you see.

More over the flip…

As dday went on to document, with the help of PFAW's great Right Wing Watch:

TVC founder the Rev. Lou Sheldon once said this:

“Americans should understand that their attitudes about homosexuality have been deliberately and deceitfully changed by a masterful propaganda/marketing campaign that rivals that of Adolph Hitler. In fact, many of the strategies used by homosexuals to bring about cultural change in America are taken from Hitler’s writings and propaganda welfare manuals.”

We at The Courage Campaign took this nugget of pure gold and ran with it, composing an e-mail that went out the following Monday calling on supporters to sign our petition demanding that Arnold Schwarzenegger fire Ben Lopez:

Ben Lopez's Traditional Values Coalition has…said this about gay rights activists: “Many of the strategies used by homosexuals to bring about cultural change in America are taken from Hitler’s writings and propaganda welfare manuals.”1

This one is simple: Governor, show us who you are. Do you side with the hate mongers who masquerade as religious leaders?

And then…

Call on the head of California's Republican Party, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to fire Ben Lopez.

Gov. Schwarzenegger can’t keep playing the moderate with extremists like Ben Lopez at his side.

How gratifying it was to wake up this morning to the headline: State GOP suddenly dumps newly hired evangelical lobbyist. The spin from the CRP was that Lopez was only meant to work

"…through the convention, and that work is now completed."

Yet according to the Chronicle:

on Sunday, Dorinson had given no indication that Lopez's job with the party would end.

Not to mention:

Lopez, reached Sunday by The Chronicle, didn't appear to know that his work was to end at the close of the convention.

As Courage Campaign Chair Rick Jacobs writes in the Huffington Post, our success at getting this "bad actor out of state politics" is a victory for good ole (or, rather, good new) fashioned people powered online organizing. Indeed it's a victory for all of us in the grassroots and netroots that worked together to bring attention to the governor's divided loyalties, get a big chunk o' hate out of Sacramento and force the governor to cut an important tie to the right wing base, an action that just might keep some of them home in November.

(As I said the other day: First Left, Then Right, Then back to left, you do the flippy-floppy and you turn yourself about. What the hell is this all about? – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Let’s drop in at last week’s California state Republican Convention to see what part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s base he’s pandering to now:

Outside the convention hall, several Minuteman members hung banners, handed out leaflets and encouraged luncheon attendees to visit a book-signing with Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist. Inside, Schwarzenegger supporters waved signs and wore green and orange buttons backing his campaign.

John Moriarity, a 72-year-old Republican from Los Angeles who heard Schwarzenegger’s speech, said he believes the governor ultimately will win support even from those who think he is too moderate.

“The reason he would have the support of the conservatives of our state is because the alternative is so disastrous,” Moriarity said. “I think there’s a lot of people who would like to see our lieutenant governor candidate (Tom McClintock) as governor, and hopefully some day he will. But you know California’s a blue state. So you’ve got to have somebody who will appeal to the socialists.” [emphasis added]

(Also available at DailyKos and My Left Wing)

Guess Mr. Moriarity will be disappointed to learn that Schwarzenegger just fired Ben Lopez, the former lobbyist for the Traditional Values Coalition (and a director of the California Republican Assembly), after having hired him just days before in an effort to throw some red meat to the homophobic, xenophobic, fundamentalist wing of the party. Mr. Lopez, you may recall, was the author of several delightful resolutions presented at the convention, including this one, which sought to outlaw citizenship for those born in the United States (you just can’t make this stuff up):

ANCHOR BABY RESOLUTION
Submitted by Ben Lopez

Whereas, current United States regulations make all those born on U.S. territory automatically citizens of our nation, and

Whereas, this has created what are called “Anchor Babies”, babies born of illegal aliens in U.S. facilities, and

Whereas, under U.S. law when these Anchor Babies reach the age of 21, they are able to petition the government to allow their parents to become U.S. citizens, and

Whereas, the United States is the only nation in the world that gives citizenship based on place of birth, and

Whereas, this has caused pregnant illegal aliens to sneak into our country just to have their children born here so the babies will be U.S. citizens, and

Whereas, these “citizens” are then eligible for food stamps, and other government services, and

Whereas, Congress has the right to set the criteria for citizenship,

Therefore, Be It Resolved by the California Republican Party at convention in Los Angeles on August 20, 2006 that we request the California Republican delegation to Congress work to submit and pass legislation to end the practice of giving citizenship based on place of birth.

Civil rights advocates were dismayed at Lopez’s hiring, especially in light of the avowed “tolerance” espoused by Schwarzenegger and the California Republican Party:

[Equality California Executive Director Geoff] Kors noted that less than two months ago California Republican Party Chair, Duf Sundheim, appeared at a Los Angeles Log Cabin Republican event and spoke about the party’s inclusion and Schwarzenegger delivered a message espousing “the values of tolerance, understanding, respect, equality, and inclusion.”

Well, yeah, but that was two months ago!

And, no sooner had the California Republican Party hired Lopez – at first denying that it had – than it unceremoniously fired him.

Ben Lopez, the chief lobbyist and spokesman for the Traditional Values Coalition — the Anaheim-based evangelical advocacy group led by the controversial Rev. Lou Sheldon — has been fired from his new job as an outreach worker with the California Republican Party, sources said Tuesday.
Lopez’s hiring had been hailed by conservatives, who have been concerned about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s moves to the political center, when it was made public late last week as the state Republican Party opened its convention. [emphasis added]

So, once again California Republicans are caught red-handed, whoring themselves to every loathsome group under the sun, pandering to the lowest human denominators. At the same time, Schwarzenegger’s machine is trying to dance around the Republican slate of xenophobes, homophobes, and Big Business apologists. Case in point: the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor, State Senator Tom McClintock.

(In California, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected independently of one another; they do not run on one ballot.)

McClintock, a rabid xenophobe who has expressed contempt for the state Supreme Court’s striking down of Proposition 187, California’s virulent anti-immigrant initiative passed in 1994, recently discontinued the use of a fundraising letter from Mel Gibson after Gibson spewed anti-Semitic and pro-sexist remarks during a drunk-driving arrest in Malibu.

Frank Russo of the California Progress Report writes:

In February, Schwarzenegger Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt said the Governor and Senator McClintock are “going to work together during the campaign. No two running mates ever agree on every issue, but Gov. Schwarzenegger is pleased to have Tom McClintock beside him.” [Contra Costa Times, February 20, 2006]

Yet Sen. McClintock hasn’t stood publicly beside Gov. Schwarzenegger once since the June 6 Primary. In fact, McClintock has voted against every one of the bond initiatives that Schwarzenegger supported. He also voted against the budget Schwarzenegger signed in June. Responding to Schwarzenegger’s flip-flop on immigration, Sen. McClintock said, “It bothered me a lot….The Governor said something he didn’t mean and I’d like to see him come forward and say so.” Sen. McClintock is still waiting for Gov. Schwarzenegger to say so.

McClintock shouldn’t take it personally, though. Arnie’s no dummy – he shunned the entire Republican slate at the state convention:

All of them crave the media attention he draws because none is well known, yet Schwarzenegger appeared alone on stage and did not mention their names. (Democrats have tried to spotlight the Republican ticket’s lack of diversity, which could dampen Schwarzenegger’s appeal. It is composed of seven white men.)

Seven white men? Snow White of the Seven Dwarfs? Wow. No wonder Arnie felt like he had to be down with the brothas on either side of the convention – sort of an Oreo cookie of campaign appearances, if you will – by speaking at the Black Chamber of Commerce just before the Gathering Of The Seven White Men, and then heading down from Pacific Palisades to the ‘Hood, commuting all the way to 323-land and South Central, destined for the Mecca of African-American campaign pandering, First AME Church in South Central Los Angeles. Not everyone was fooled, however:

The parishioners greeted Schwarzenegger warmly, and several stopped to shake his hand. But Ralph Walker of Covina walked out of the church just after the governor arrived, telling reporters outside that Schwarzenegger had torn down the state during the 2005 special election and was trying to repair his reputation.

“Everything in there is damage control and ‘Let me fix up my image,’ ” said Walker, 57, an independent. “Did he get lost? Why is he here?”

Why? Can you say, ”pandering”?