Republicans gather this weekend in Los Angeles for the country
club coronation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Will any notice that the
former Mr. Universe emperor still has no clothes on? The more one
examines the Schwarzenegger campaign, the more nakedly liberal it
appears.
It appears that the circle of liberal advisers around
Schwarzenegger is not contracting but growing wider by the day.
Robert Kennedy Jr., a wild-eyed left-wing environmentalist, is
“advising him on strategy,” reported the Los Angeles Times
this week in a piece
entitled “Schwarzenegger is the GOP’s Green Candidate.” Even the
Times can put two and two together, observing that “on a
variety of environmental issues in California, Schwarzenegger’s
views are closer to those of liberal rivals” than to Tom
McClintock’s.
Trimming his sails to the winds of political correctness as
usual, Schwarzenegger is “talking about retrofitting his Hummer to
run on clean-burning hydrogen,” reports the Times. More
seriously, the “film star is crafting a set of positions at odds
with the Bush administration on a broad range of issues, from
logging in the Sierra Nevada to controlling greenhouse gases from
cars and trucks.”
Schwarzenegger’s campaign has “outlined a program to cut air
pollution by 50% before the end of the decade, in part by paying
people to junk older, heavily polluting cars, and by creating a
network of hydrogen refueling stations throughout California, to
encourage use of the alternative fuel,” according to the
Times. Who outlined this program? “It was fashioned with
the help of advisors brought in by Robert Kennedy,” says the
Times.
No wonder John F. Kennedy’s sister Eunice can loudly endorse
Schwarzenegger. The Kennedys have often given unsolicited liberal
advice to the GOP, now their liberal counsel is sought.
Not mentioned in the Times story on Schwarzenegger’s
environmentalism is another flaky left-wing adviser to him on Green
issues — Democrat Bonnie Reiss. The California Political
Review website reports that
Reiss “has long been an influential, highly effective leader of
Hollywood’s left-wing environmentalists, working with Norman Lear
before forming her own organization promoting a broadly
anti-market, anti-private property political agenda.”
Reiss also comes from the Kennedy circle. “She worked for U.S.
Senator Edward Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign before moving
to Southern California to specialize in entertainment law,” reports
California Political Review. She belonged to the
Environmental Media Association “founded by Norman Lear, a group
that worked to insert pro-‘Green’ messages into mainstream
television programs and movies.”
Reiss is the founder of an oddball outfit called Earth
Communications Office (ECO). Associated Press reported in 1991 that
“because of ECO, ‘Designing Women’ created an episode about using
cloth diapers, Michael Douglas is producing a movie about toxic
waste, ‘L.A. Law’ addressed animal rights, ‘Murphy Brown’ took on
recycling, and Barbra Streisand included an environmental message
in her latest album.”
“We have only ten years left to do something,” gasped Reiss when
ECO was founded.
In the July issue of Sierra, an article titled “Green
Glitterati: Celebrities give props to the environment” calls ECO
“another Hollywood green group … founded in 1989 by entertainment
attorney Bonnie Reiss, who discovered that many of the biggest
stars were willing to bring some high gloss to the realm of the
tree- hugger,” reports California Political Review.
According to Sierra, Reiss’s group “made its mark with
emotional public-service announcements shown before the main
features in movie theaters all over the globe. Footage of pristine
waters, roiling clouds, leaping dolphins, and time-lapsed sunsets
with Willie Nelson singing ‘What a Wonderful World’ as soundtrack
encouraged viewers to ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle.’”
We knew Schwarzenegger recruited tax-hiking advisers. Now we
know he has tree-hugging ones too. Both foreshadow an anti-business
Schwarzenegger governorship. Before the country club elite
bamboozle Republicans into crowning Schwarzenegger, the
rank-and-file should ask themselves: Did we register with the
Republican Party to spread Kennedy liberalism or stop it?
