State of Denial

 

For some on the Conservative Right, denial is a river in Egypt.  Case in point, Jon Fleischman’s FlashReport commentary for Thursday, December 14, 2006.
 

The topic was good appointments the Governor has made (hint, they’re Republicans) and bad appointments the Governor has made (you guessed it ..Democrats, and say the word the same way Sylvester the Cat utters “despicable.”)
 

Never mind that Democrats dominated the statewide races, or that Susan Kennedy, the governor’s loyal-to-him-but-Democratic chief-of-staff, is actually doing an effective job, no Democratic is good enough for our Jon.  He still wants her to be relieved immediately.
 

Jon writes:
 

I have a tendency to go on about these Democrats in the Governor’s office because it really irks me.  After all, Governor Schwarzenegger would not be in office today if it weren’t for the recall election, and there would have been no recall were it not for Republicans who were upset with Gray Davis.  Yes, we are told time and time again that we need to have faith in our Republican Governor, and that it is he, not the staff around him, that are the decision makers.  That said, it is a lot easier for me to blame the Governor’s leftward shift on some major issues on the liberal input from the staff around him, then to believe that my Republican Governor really believes that more regulation and more government intervention is a good thing.

 
Actually Jon, OUR Governor (he’s my governor too even if he wasn’t my choice) would not have been re-elected if he didn’t make a hard leftward turn. Jon has a good memory on Susan Kennedy’s involvement in the election that elevated Barbara Boxer to the US Senate, but he has apparently forgotten the massive defeat suffered by the Governor in the 2005 special election that was all about a hard rightward turn.
 

Might be hard to see in the Red County, but people vote in California, square acreage doesn’t.  And California is a Blue State with people who are more center-left than center right.  
 

Schwartzenegger’s popularity in the last election cycle didn’t move up until he started to embrace a more left-center position leaving Angelides the far left.  The Governor was even smart enough to be out of town when President Bush came to the Left Coast.  It wasn’t too long ago that Jon celebrated how conservatives in Michigan threw an incumbent liberal Republican congressman under the bus for not being conservative enough; wonder if it will get to that point with Schwartzenegger.
 

Time to face facts; The Governor is a Republican in name only..a RINO.  He’s not left, he’s not right, he’s a populist.  I am going to venture to guess if the Governor decides to run for the Senate, he might even do so as a Democrat.  It would be an easy jump to make because he is already more than halfway there and he can blame hard right conservatives for hijacking the Republican Party.