( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

I suppose the Republican Party is putting all of its eggs in the California basket, backing a guy who dishonestly ran pretty much as a Democrat, who also can never be President under current law and admits that no change on that could possibly happen in his lifetime.  I’ll bet actual conservatives are out there thinking “With friends like these…”

So it was that the Republican nation, and Tim Russert, turned its lonely eyes to Arnold Schwarzenegger on Meet the Press yesterday, hoping to glean some kind of knowledge on how to win again.  Judging from portions of the transcript and personal experience with California, apparently the way to win is to have millions more than your opponent, and run screaming away from any conservative policy there is.

MR. RUSSERT: George Lewis, who works for NBC News, did an analysis, and he talked about the specific issues that you focused on. And let’s look at that.  “Schwarzenegger did something that is unheard of in politics these days, he said, `I messed up. I was wrong.’ And he made a hard turn to the center politically and started working with the Democrats, who control the state legislature. … The new Schwarzenegger backs stem cell research. … He also favors a measure, that was written by Democrats, to increase the minimum wage here in California and to combat global warming. So the new Schwarzenegger is a moderate.” Is that fair?

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, no, because I have always been a moderate. When I came into office three years ago, you and I talked about it then. I, I was, you know, promoting and pushing stem cell research then already, literally.  Like, I was not even in office when I was already out there campaigning for stem cell research. I think this is just a very important issue.

And we shouldn’t look at those issues as Republican issues or-vs. Democratic issues, or conservative vs. liberal. It is just-these are people’s issues.  We need to address those issues because I think that if we really promote stem cell research and fund stem cell research, I think we can find cures for very, very important-illnesses that so many millions of people are suffering from.  And I think that if it is-has to do with global warming, or if it has to do with raising the minimum wage, or if it has to do with lowering prescription drugs for vulnerable citizens-all of those things are people issues, not Democratic issues or Republican issues, and I think we were able to bring both of the parties together and accomplish all of those things.

Of course these are actually all issues that get near-universal support among Democrats, and near-universal disapprobation among Republicans, including those in Arnold’s own state legislature.  California’s State Senate and State Assembly Republicans voted for exactly zero of these proposals.  The notion that it’s now sensible and centrist to support core Democratic ideas is great news for national Democrats as a whole, and it’s simply silly for so-called “moderates” to suggest that this is where they were all along.  It’s not, and it took a “thumpin'” at the polls to get them to believe this.  It so happens that Arnold took his thumpin’ a year before Bush did, and so he saw the writing on the wall.  Without a special election, who knows?

By the way, Arnold AGAIN said that his 2005 Special Election initiatives were a big batch of “good ideas,” and since Russert probably had no idea what he was talking about, he let it go unquestioned:

MR. RUSSERT: And when you went to the people on four different voter initiatives and lost them all, and you took on the unions, you took on the Democrats, you said, “I made a mistake.”

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, the mistake was not on what we were trying to do, because we need the reforms, and I think slowly we are seeing reforms happening in California. But what was wrong in-was the approach. To go and to say to the legislators, “I give you two months, and if you don’t agree with all of those things that I put on the table here in my State of the State address, then I will go to the people.” Well, the people really, you know, rejected that. They basically have said to us, “Don’t come to us with every initiative and with every idea. You fix it in the capital. That’s why we elect you, to go to the capital, and Democrats and Republicans work together.” And that’s exactly-we all got the message.

I’d like to see him try to bust unions again through “paycheck protection,” good idea that it is.  Or to decrease teacher’s job security.  Or to give himself carte blanche to line item the state budget.  I’d really like to see how those “good ideas” fly in the state legislature.  Of course, he’s going to use redistricting as the example, and it is a needed reform, though not in the manner he saw fit to implement in 2005. 

Meanwhile, on economic issues, Arnold continued to act like a lying supply-sider and leave the crucial information out of the answer.  Again, Russert didn’t challenge this astonishing bit of ju-jitsu:

MR. RUSSERT: One of the issues that are confronting you is the continuing deficit in California and also the six million uninsured, without health insurance. The San Jose Mercury wrote an editorial on Friday and said this, “While other states have been racking up surpluses and squirreling away money, California has run up deficits and piled on debt. That can’t continue. In the latest five-year forecast, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office projects a $5 billion deficit in the coming year and a $4 billion deficit the year after. … Now, something’s got to give – either Gov. Schwarzenegger’s vow not to raise taxes or his campaign pledges to fix health care and reform education. The latter should be the priority. He shouldn’t abandon promises on behalf of students and the [6 million] uninsured. … Schwarzenegger should swallow hard and consider taxes: either a dedicated tax, like raising the tobacco tax, or a temporary tax. … [Another] option worth exploring: expanding the sales tax to include some professional services in exchange for reducing the sales tax rate.” How do you juggle that?

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, Tim, when I came into office, they said exactly the same thing: I got to raise taxes, I got to raise taxes, please raise taxes by at least 5 billion or $8 billion a year. And I said, “No. We’re going to stimulate the economy,” and that’s exactly what we’ve done, we’ve stimulated the economy. Now our revenues went up by $20 billion, first from 76 billion to $96 billion without raising taxes. That is the way to go. I think what we have to do in the future is, is we’ve got to go and pay down our debt, which we have been doing. And we have done a tremendous job of bringing down the structural deficit from $16 ½ billion when I took office to now $4 ½ billion. And we’re going to come down further this year and we’re going to eliminate it by next year or the year after that. I think that’s what we need to do. Never raise taxes, it wouldn’t happen. The people of California have voted “no” on all the tax increases this year, if it is the tobacco tax, if it is any kind of additional tax, everything was voted no on, including the nurses, as you remember, the nurses’ association, they have had a proposition on there to raise taxes, everything was voted no, including, including the oil tax.

You borrowed billions and billions of dollars.  That’s it.  To the extent that the structural deficit is “fixed,” which it isn’t at all, the only reason is the continued borrowing of money to finance current project.  The birth tax on Californians is astronomical.  And somehow, Russert lets him wriggle off the hook with this dishonest, ridiculous answer.  Also unmentioned is the fact that most of the “increased revenue” came in one-time tax amnesty payments from corporations who simply refused to pay their bills, a gambit largely executed by Democratic gubernatorial candidate and State Controller Steve Westly and Democratic gubernatorial nominee and State Treasurer Phil Angelides.  If corporations were made to pay their taxes to begin with instead of being bailed out by “amnesty” payments, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today.  Instead we’ve financed the debt through continued borrowing, all of which goes completely unmentioned.  Indeed the entire infrastructure bond scheme, which he touts the whole interview, is a gigantic bond issue.  Arnold is so eager to please that he’s kicked the can down the road on any hard choices that need to be made for the state, and the people have willingly followed him.  That’s why no taxes were approved but all bond measures were.  He’s got people believing that borrowing is magic.  It’s not.  Eventually you have to pay the investors off, with interest.  I expect ordinary people to be self-interested, and eschew additional taxation, but approve bonds in order to put questions of debt out of sight and out of mind.  I don’t expect anyone who calls him or herself a leader to do the same.  It’s political cowardice.

Arnold’s going to come hard after a health care compromise this year, as well as prison reform and redistricting.  He’ll probably pick one big thing a year and run with it until his term ends, at which point he’ll try and challenge Boxer in 2010 (he didn’t deny the rumors to Russert).  As long as we have Democratic leaders in the State Legislature who take bribes from telecom companies, he’ll probably be able to steer this course.  And certainly he’ll get nothing but big pats on the rump from the media.  This is quite the problem for the state, because clearly those of us who live here will pay for this faux-moderation with a dysfunctional debt for decades, as well as naked attempts to stifle the voices of working people and all of the other “good ideas” contained in his twisted vision of “bipartisanship.”

(Cross-posted from The California Courage Campaign)

As Brian notes below, Meet The Press on Sunday featured an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why is he worthy of such a prominent Sunday morning slot? In a nutshell, Russert asked the now trite question:

In this year of a Democratic wave, why was Schwarzenegger immune?

The show opened with the dramatic statistic that just one year ago, Arnold’s approval was at 32% and his disapproval was at 58%. He then followed that up with the fact that on Nov. 7 of this year, Arnold was re-elected with 56% of the vote to Angelides’s 39%. A dramatic reversal to be sure.

But while on paper it does appear quite dramatic, those of us who’ve been here watching the turnaround as it happened know that it was actually quite a gradual process that arose from several factors, not the least of which were that Schwarzenegger apologized for pushing through his unpopular reforms last year and he swiftly moved to the left and ran on a progressive platform. This more than anything else explains why the Democratic wave didn’t sink Schwarzenegger: he was indistinguishable from a Democrat.

More over the flip.

Ironically, this strategy of fleeing the national Republican brand was enabled by Bush/Cheney’04 wunderkinds Matt Dowd and Steve Schmidt who ran Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign. They exhibited a keen sense of the mood of the nation in 2004 and had just such a sense of the mood of Californians this year. They made sure that any attempt to tie Arnold to national Republicans was a futile one.

Which brings me back to Meet The Press and why Arnold’s story is even worth telling. Russert began the interview by quoting a Wall St. Journal article that put it this way:

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 17-point victory alone commands attention since it is easily the most impressive score by any Republican in a Democratic-leaning state this year – and it suggests a future for pro-environment, pro-business, fiscally conservative and socially moderate politics.

In other words, for pragmatic Republicans, Arnold’s victory should serve as a blueprint for how the party can win in blue states post-2006, which was precisely the jumping off point of our conference call on November 9; more specifically, our concern was and is what Arnold’s win could mean for Republican chances here in California in 2008 at a presidential level.

The next line of the Wall St. Journal article points to one of the reasons pollster Joel Wright cited in the conference call for why we should be concerned about the fate of California’s 55 electoral votes:

The key to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s victory lay not in seducing the left, but through his mastery of the state’s rising independent center.

Yes, it’s that dreaded ‘ascendant middle’ meme that the media has decreed is the takeaway story of the 2006 elections, a meme that while terribly simplified, is, sadly, not all wrong. You know and I know that our progressive values won big on November 7, but it’s also true that this was not a base election. Nationally, turnout was huge; by all accounts, both bases showed up. The difference was that the independent swing voters went overwhelmingly for Democrats this year. However, in California they went for Schwarzenegger.

The real problem this poses for California Democrats is that this independent middle is growing at the expense of registered Democrats.

From Wright:

Voter registration stats indicate a subtle but clearly operative movement of voters away from parties and toward non-alignment/Independent status. Example: Dem registration has declined by 2 percent since 2002. Rep registration has remained unchanged. While there is a larger pool of registered voters, up 2 percent, partisan registration has declined.

Californians are fleeing both parties and Schwarzenegger knows it. Having just won, Schwarzenegger used the Meet The Press interview to paint himself as poster boy of the independent middle. Listen to these talking points:

It doesn’t really matter what party you come from I think the people appreciate it and they know you’re working together and you provide the kind of leadership to bring both of the parties together and do the kind of things that need to be done for the state.

And guess what Arnold’s recipe for electoral success nationwide entails:

If there’s any lesson there, nationwide we need to look at it much more like what is it that the people need rather than what is good for our party.

I suppose we should take it as a good sign that even in re-election afterglow, Arnold is not claiming some Republican mandate. On the contrary, he signals no intention of swinging back to the right any time soon. Hell, when asked what an “Arnold Republican” is, he even used the ‘p’ word:

It’s basically being fiscally conservative, being socially moderate and being environmentally progressive.

By now, we know Arnold well enough to know that this is just the latest governor Arnold iteration. And it’s fine for now; certainly preferable to the 2005 edition. But no matter how progressive he claims to be or actually is, this is still a construct borne from the minds that brought us Bush/Cheney ’04. There’s no doubt in my mind that Arnold Schwarzenegger is being used as a re-branding tool (sounds painful doesn’t it?) of the national Republican party. Next thing you know, he’ll be on the 2008 ticket as VP candidate, potentially moderating a more rightwing presidential candidate and putting California in play.

You thought last year’s model was bad? This new ‘independent middle’ Arnold could be the most dangerous one of all.