Arnold Schwarzenegger, not yet ready to play a Republican on
television, planned to duck Wednesday’s gubernatorial debate. Here
we have the four-corners pampered celebrity offense. Schwarzenegger
will only appear at one debate, a mid-September event that gives
the candidates the questions in advance. Schwarzenegger can learn
his lines for that one.
Schwarzenegger must chuckle at the ease with which he has
manipulated this race. He only had to toss a few bones toward
Republicans to get them to jump up on his lap. He made vague
anti-tax sounds at one press conference and he is suddenly a
Republican we can all trust. How many times will the Jim Jeffordses
have to burn Republicans before they realize that liberal
Republicans always govern like Democrats?
Schwarzenegger’s statement that he wouldn’t raise taxes unless
there is an emergency is hardly reassuring. The state is in an
emergency! Does that justify a tax hike? We’ll see.
Unless a Republican is explicitly and philosophically opposed to
new taxes he will eventually raise them. It is not hard to imagine
a Governor Schwarzenegger raising taxes “for the children.” His
automatic dismissal of cuts to education spending — he won’t even
consider them, despite the California educational system’s
reputation as a bloated bureaucracy and gravy train for hack
teachers — is telling.
It is clear that he has no concept of limited government. True,
he says the state shouldn’t spend money it doesn’t have. But this
just implies that it is okay to kick-start the spending once tax
revenues roll in. That the state should only perform the few
functions the people can’t perform for themselves is not an idea in
his head, as is clear from his remark that the “children” get first
crack at the state treasury. Statists talk about “before-school and
after-school programs”; conservatives talk about before-school and
after-school parents.
Downplaying his adviser Warren Buffett’s pro-tax positions,
Schwarzenegger says that both the left and the right are
represented in his campaign. Actually, it is only the left and the
center. Wilsonites are not the right. Pete Wilson engineered the
largest tax hike in California state history. Richard Riordan,
another influence on Schwarzenegger, is also an avowed tax-hiker,
once saying that “We must be willing to increase the tax dollars
for schools. Pulling up the ladders will not be enough to protect
us from the crime and the ultimate need for more tax dollars to
take care of increasing social problems.”
Like Riordan, Schwarzenegger has said that he is “very liberal”
about social programs. How will he pay for these very liberal
social programs? Social liberals never end up fiscal conservatives,
because statism depends upon the financing of fiscal
liberalism.
Unless Schwarzenegger grasps that government should only do what
the people can’t do for themselves, there is no reason to believe
that he will govern as a fiscal conservative. Moreover, the social
problems he wants government to solve were created in large part by
the liberal morality he espouses. The irresponsible ethos he
casually discussed in his comically obscene, exhumed Oui
interview — and which he still at some level accepts, as evident
from his Howard Stern appearances — has contributed to the
pathologies that drive the expansion of government. Schwarzenegger
is a “children’s activist” who supports the sexual-revolution
morality that hurts children.
If a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual adoption Democrat with a
history of group sex were in the race, Republicans would consider
that candidate a danger to the commonweal. So why does all of this
become acceptable when the candidate has an “R” after his name?
What does it profit a party to win and lose its soul? Now we even
hear the same Republicans who lamented the Clintonization of
politics rejoice that it will spare their candidate further
scrutiny.
The race is now down to three candidates — a liberal Democrat,
a Republican with Democratic views, and a real Republican, Tom
McClintock. He is a Republican rarity in the state, a politician
with a functioning intellect and backbone. So clearly he is not
electable. It never occurs to Republicans that this fatalism about
conservatives like McClintock guarantees that they will never win.
The fatalism fulfills itself. Yes, a half of a loaf is better than
none. But if Schwarzenegger wins conservatives will be lucky to
even get crumbs.
