Vacationing in Newport Beach this week (where else would a Republican stuck living in Ron Dellums-Barbara Lee’s backyard go on vacation?), we had dinner last night with some SoCal friends when one of them asked what we thought of the governor. This friend was no fan of the governator when I was cheering on Schwarzenegger’s candidacy in the recall election. To my "I’m in the anyone-but-Phil-so-I’m-going-to-hold-my-nose-and-vote camp," I got a big (and deserved) "I told you so." I said that while I knew that the governor was no Ronald Reagan, I thought he was more of a Chamber-of-Commerce Republican. And he was–the first two years in office. But this morning’s news on the minimum wage rate increase convinces me that the California Republicans are going to help re-elect Schwarzenegger to office and spend the next four years wondering what we did to ourselves.
I don’t really blame the governor. He is a product of Hollywood and, it seems to me, values making a deal and keeping the press and Maria happy over sticking to GOP values. But since this is his first elected office, we had no idea how committed he really was to limited government and free market principles. While my concern on that front has increased since the governor and his team have decided to "remake" himself by buying off all of the groups that attacked him in the special election, this morning’s news proved that the governor is not at all dedicated to the principles of limited government. And we are still waiting to see what deal he’s going to agree to on the global warming bill. My guess is that the FR readers and contributers are going to be unhappy with the outcome of that issue as well.
The governor’s has received and will continue to receive positive media attention–here and across the nation–for his move towards the left. We Republicans will all show up and vote for him after getting a rah-rah speech at the convention (which was appaently just rhetoric) and being courted by the Republican staffers on the Schwarzenegger campaign.
But what happens after Election Day? The smart GOP campaign workers will leave after the election night party. And Second Term Arnold will be a governor who has learned that he gets kudos from the mainstream press when he signs minimum wage hikes and pays off the teacher’s union and gets criticized by the press when he tries to make state government live within its means and rein in the power of the public employees’ unions. Susan Kennedy and Maria Schriver will continue to be influencial in key hiring and policy decisions. And we will likely not have many big wins in the down ticket races as the governor’s campaign is sucking up all of the money and the press attention without sharing any of it with his fellow statewide GOP candidates. (They should all be unhappy with the CRP staff who sent reporters and photographers away from the Friday night convention dinner with the assurance that they’d get a call when the down ticket candidates were going on to speak. Instead, there was a balloon drop and a round of speeches with only one reporter present. The others were at dinner waiting for the CRP staffer’s call….)
The only good news of the day is that Terry Tamminen has left the administration.