The drive to line up Republicans behind Arnold Schwarzenegger
for governor bears all the elements that reduced the California
Republican Party to a shambles by the end of the 1990s. Consider
the message we have heard so far on the bedrock issue of taxes:
Yes we’re against taxes … but, you know, property taxes are
too low — what? Did we say that? No, no, we love Prop. 13, don’t
listen to that man behind the curtain If he says that again, he’ll
have to do 500 sit-ups. No, I won’t sign any pledge not to increase
taxes, though Californians are terribly over-taxed. It’s just that
I can’t bring myself to say even that I won’t add to their burden,
much less outline a plan for relieving it. There could be an
emergency, like a flood or an invasion from Mars; but, trust me,
I’ll clean house.
To my friends and colleagues who support Arnold Schwarzenegger
or who believe his election, despite his shortcomings, would
strengthen the Republican Party, I must say I disagree. Hardly more
than a few weeks ago, we all expected Democrats to hold the
governor’s office for three more years — so little did the
prospect trouble Republicans that, had it not been for Darrell
Issa’s generosity and foresight, the recall would have been left to
fail for want of a cash investment relatively small considered
against the vast resources routinely poured into California
politics. But now, suddenly, October 7 is being discussed as though
it were the last election we would ever see.
I do not minimize the critical issues at stake in the recall: on
the contrary, it is precisely because they are so important that I
urge Republicans to keep matters in context. A quick victory —
even supposing such a thing is likely were Mr. Schwarzenegger alone
in the GOP field, and I do not think it would be — but even
supposing it were likely, I believe the probable cost would
outweigh the gain for Republicans and for California. Supporting a
candidate genuinely devoted to Republican principles is perhaps a
more difficult course at the moment, but real political strength,
like most other real strengths, is built slowly from solid
foundations.
We’ve been through this before — eight years of it. Pete Wilson
was going to create a powerful “New Republicanism” — but left the
California GOP a wreck, characterized by dysfunctional or
non-existent Party organizations, a famine in new candidates, a
collapsed grass roots structure, wracked by internecine ideological
warfare, unable to register voters, raise dollars, or articulate a
message (with notable local exceptions here and there where the
Wilson influence had not penetrated or had been overcome). It added
up to a one-Party, Democrat state.
Wilson’s “New Republicanism” wasn’t new, and it wasn’t, as
advertised, “fiscally conservative and socially moderate.” It was
opportunism. The governor publicly excoriated and privately
betrayed fiscal conservatism as quickly and vehemently as social
conservatism when either crossed his vision for his own career. He
also adopted conservative themes when that served his purpose. “One
thing you can be sure of,” a longtime Sacramento activist told me
after Wilson announced support of some already-popular initiative
to eliminate race preferences or bilingual education or benefits
for illegals or something, “it is already an almost certain winner.
They never back anything until they’ve tested it every way possible
to make sure it will help Pete.”
Democrats are in trouble and in revolt against Gray Davis for
the same reason Republicans rebelled against Wilson. Both governors
made it plain they themselves were their top priority, not issues,
not base constituencies, not the people who sacrificed to make the
Party win, and certainly not the state. People who give of
themselves day after day to bring political victory over the long
term don’t suffer selfish, duplicitous leaders happily.
What is the message of the Schwarzenegger campaign? Tough talk
when a restive public demands it, but, from beyond the limelight,
one keeps hearing such things as that “Arnold Schwarzenegger has
tapped former Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan to create an ‘issues
team’ made up of experts on California policy to help his campaign
develop specific proposals …” (Fox News, August 9). Need we
re-hash Mr. Riordan’s policy positions, the man Sacramento
Bee columnist Dan Walters noticed differed from Gray Davis
only on points where the Riordan silhouette protruded to Davis’s
left? — the man whose checkbook helped bank-roll (in the six
figure range) Democrat campaigns against even sitting Republican
office holders like George Deukmejian?
In cold terms, the Schwarzenegger message is: elect me and you
will have a governor with an “R” after his name. Beyond that, no
guarantees, except, of course, that he jettisons the interests of
at least two core GOP constituencies, pro-lifers and pro-gunners.
That should please Democrats, especially those aware of the
shellacking they took last year in the 80th Assembly District where
a pro-life Republican defeated a pro-abort Democrat in a
Democrat-gerrymandered, heavily Latino district. Mr. Schwarzenegger
will not harvest the rich Reagan Democrat potential of Hispanic
voters.
RETURN TO REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR is inevitable under Mr.
Schwarzenegger, just as the civil war was unavoidable under Wilson,
a man who “wanted to win” as much as the Terminator does. A strong
grass roots structure becomes an automatic brake on and
embarrassment to a Party leader who opposes the grass roots’
political goals. When Governor Schwarzenegger, for instance, wants
a tax hike, he’ll know Senator McClintock, among others, will rise
in the Legislature, at Party gatherings, before reporters, and on
talk radio to point out in detail how destructive to the economy
and to GOP fortunes it will be. The governor will know that Mr.
McClintock will be cheered by most ordinary Republicans, and by
many other Californians, who will then think ill of the governor.
So Governor Schwarzenegger, like Wilson before him, will
counter-attack, adopting the usual clichés about rigid,
right-wing ideologues stuck in the past, uncaring, unpopular,
unable to lead, and the press will eat it up.
I have seen it — too much. The one way guaranteed to fill a
news conference with reporters and generate lavish next day
coverage was always to lambaste Pete Wilson. The “Republicans
attack themselves again” story is always news. And it somehow
magically pries opened the otherwise hermetically sealed (to
conservatives) op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times: slam
the governor, or have the governor slam conservatives, and the page
is yours.
In the mid-1990s, I organized a Capitol news conference with
former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese to criticize a decision
authored by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron George. The room
was packed, but despite our showing such noteworthy items as that
former Democrat Senate Leader David Roberti agreed that George was
misinterpreting a law Roberti had shepherded through the state
Senate, all the reporters seemed interested in was the vexed
question: wasn’t it all Pete Wilson’s fault for having put George
on the Court? When it became apparent that neither Meese nor I were
there to talk about Wilson, the room deflated. Next day saw a few
stray wire stories in small papers, but the Bee, the
Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the TV
stations — all of whom had sent reporters — somehow couldn’t find
any news to report from the conference.
The Schwarzenegger candidacy serves a variety of interests, some
quite legitimate, others less so, but mainly it ignores the
interests of the people of California.
It serves the national interests of the White House and
east-coast Republicans who believe Mr. Schwarzenegger offers their
best chance of reading “GOP Retakes California Governorship” in the
Washington Post and New York Times October 8,
with the implication of dismay and demoralization for national
Democrats and national momentum for the president and his Party on
the eve of his re-election campaign. But the details for those of
us actually living in California under a liberal GOP administration
fall outside those concerns.
It serves the interests of members of former Governor Wilson’s
administration surviving in the political wilderness since Davis
took office who believe Mr. Schwarzenegger represents their best
chance of returning to the state Capitol. And it serves liberal
Republicans who, as a minor faction within the state Party, require
liberal Republican champions at the top to make them a force in
state politics.
But it does not serve California’s people, and, by failing to do
that, it ultimately guarantees failure for Republican political
fortunes in California, certainly in the long run, if not right
away. Successful politics in a democracy consists of a pact between
political leaders and enough people to supply resources and votes
sufficient to win elections. Wilsonian “New Republicanism” breaks
the pact. Its return will smother the nascent Republican revival in
Los Angeles, San Diego, and other counties, resurrecting the
ideological wars and sending the creative, dedicated people capable
of rebuilding the Party streaming again for the exits.
The Democrats speak and act for their special interest
supporters — Davis forgot that, and he is about to be deposed as a
result.
Republicans speak for those oppressed and abused by the
Democrats’ special interests: unborn babies, taxpayers, pro-family
activists, freedom loving patriots, business owners and their
employees, home schoolers, religious believers, families, young
people looking for economic opportunities, seniors looking for
secure retirements, kids and parents in the Boy Scouts, anyone who
likes to drive a car or own a home — in a phrase: ordinary
Californians, the people. Pete Wilson forgot that, giving us our
one-Party state. Reverting now to opportunism while forgetting
about people will cost more than it will gain.
One candidate in this election speaks for the people. He is a
Republican and well known, a proven vote-getter who offers a
genuine alternative to the Democrats. As the antithesis of the
Wilson idea, he will rebuild the Party for all the reasons Mr.
Schwarzenegger threatens to tear it down. Tom McClintock will get
my vote October 7.
