The other day I was talking with a friend, one who is taking a serious look at Donald J. Trump and his candidacy, and I pointed out to him what really worried me is that the Donald would turn out to be another Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Lo and behold last night in my looky around the internets, I came across this excellent post by John Fleischman making the same case.
And like myself, Mr. Fleischman regrets having been swept up in Arnoldmania.
It was the recall election in which then Gov. Gray Era Davis ended up being recalled. It was a two-part ballot. No matter how you voted on the question of whether the Gray Era should be recalled or not, you could vote for his replacement. The recall passed and political neophyte Schwarzenegger won. As you can see here, county by county it was a blowout in many. Even Los Angeles county almost went for the recall. But the left-wing precincts of No Cal, especially the Bay Area, opposed the recall. Mr. Schwarzenegger won with 49% of the vote with over 100 candidates.
The history of how Mr. Schwarzenegger became governor is very important.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Schwarzenegger made his announcement on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Mr. Schwarzenegger then campaigned like the dickens on a very similar platform that Mr. Trump is running on. The establishment is bad. As Mr. Fleischman points out, Mr. Schwarzenegger had a broom as a prop on the campaign trail and said "We are going to sweep out the special interests!" And another great line was "We are going to take the government back!" Now I would say we can insert laugh track here, but we shall wait for that.
One of the actual serious issues that accelerated the recall election was the Democrats passing a massive hike in the vehicle registration fee. Many motorists had to make the choice of paying the fee and eventually letting their state-mandated auto insurance lapse. Mr. Schwarzenegger ran hard on that issue and used that to constantly drive home the point that taxes in 2003 California were already, to coin a phrase, too damn high.
Upon Mr. Schwarzenegger's triumph, he was able to roll back the vehicle registration fee to pre-hike levels. There was seemingly some willingness to have good will on the part of Democrats who were clearly taken aback by the public's anger.
Gov. Schwarzenegger was trying to reform state unions and state spending in general. But eventually the Democrats reverted to their old tax and spend ways. So the governor's brain trust proposed putting several proposals on a special election ballot. That is all it took for the school teacher unions to ramp up a campaign against any reform measures, especially regarding union dues. Because the Democrats controlled the state legislature, there was no chance to steer the reforms through the legislative process. Good thinking outside of the box, right? Well by the time Team Arnold could muster up enough signatures to put his proposals on the ballot and fight back, the public's mind was already made up. Thus, as you can see here, propositions 74, 75, 76, and 77 went down to ignoble defeat.
From the day after those election results until the day he left office, Arnold Schwarzenegger became Benedict Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Why he was so whipped, much of his team quit and he appointed a Democrat to be his chief of staff.
Remember the special interests? They are essentially running the state of California into the ground. Remember the government he wanted to take back? It is worse now than it was then. To prove how whipped Gov. Benedict Arnold was, before he left office, he agreed to . . .hike the vehicle registration fee. The very issue that he ran against, he caved.
As Mr. Fleischman points out, he is a conservative and he was buying the bull from Benedict Arnold. It sounded so good. There were no details, but one just felt Arnold could run the government like a super hero he often portrayed in the movies. We conservatives did have a choice in congressman Tom McClintock. Mr. McClintock did pull about 13% of the vote. But too many of us believed in Arnold. That he could do whatever he wanted and would follow through.
But it ended up that we were fooled. The recall made us feel good in getting rid of rubbish. But what did we replace the Gray Era with? As it turned out, more garbage.
Many of the Trumpettes will not want to hear this. They are, as I am, so desperate for someone to show some real leadership, they do not care to know more than the Donald is saying what many conservatives are thinking. The Republican-led congress is all but impotent. They are not following through on any of the issues that conservatives care about. Like voting to repeal Obamacare. Of course I don't expect the Dear Leader, President Obama, to sign the bill. Or pursuing tax cuts. Showing that they will not be bullied by the president and his Democrat allies.
Some of the GOP presidential candidates are not exactly sounding that they want to pursue a serious conservative agenda. Jeb! Bush comes to mind. But Ohio governor, John Kasich, also seems to be twisting about enacting a conservative agenda.
But the problem is while the Donald is berating these impotent "leaders", he is not offering any serious proposals. And if you really think that the border wall will be built, may I sell you a bridge in Saudi Arabia? If you think that 11,000,000 illegal aliens are going to be deported, sorry it won"t happen. And if any Trumpette is paying attention, the vast majority of those deported will be able to go through an expedited process to RETURN to the United States. It's a half-assed amnesty, worse than the so-called "comprehensive immigration reform"/.
I saw the same thing happen under worse circumstances in 2003. So did a conservative activist named John Fleischman. The ending really sucked. And if, God forbid, it should somehow end the same way, God help the United States of America.
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