The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s answer to the Huffington Post, is reporting that Governor Schwarzenegger and his aides gave serious thought to Arnold leaving the Republican Party.
From the post:
A few months ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a few close associates discussed whether he should leave the Republican Party, according to two people familiar with the conversation. His friend Mike Bloomberg, the New York mayor, had become an independent. Maybe Schwarzenegger should, too. But the governor and his people quickly concluded that Californians already saw him as independent of the Republican Party. So what would be the point of a switch? (A spokesman for the governor declined comment.)
To people outside the state, Schwarzenegger’s recent battles with Republican legislators over a budget and his criticism of GOP governors and congressmen for their opposition to President Obama’s stimulus package might sound jarring. Schwarzenegger once was “Conan the Republican†(the first President Bush’s nickname for him), a politician who declared in his 2004 convention speech, “I’m proud to belong to the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of Teddy Roosevelt, the party of Ronald Reagan and the party of George W. Bush.†Now he is on ABC News saying that “it doesn’t really mater if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.â€
and there’s more…
“How did the marriage between Schwarzenegger and his party go bad? The truth is that it was never much of a marriage. Schwarzenegger’s criticism of Republicans pre-dates his entry into political life. At first, however, many Republicans loved the actor’s image so much that they didn’t pay attention to his words. “Arnold is a very seductive individual,†said Stephen Moore, then president of the conservative Club for Growth, in 2004. ”
(just ask Jon Fleischman, who worshipped at Arnold’s feet in 2003).
I know the GOPrati in the blogsphere will say Arnold was never a Republican; but aren’t they themselves to blame for working so hard to elect this guyu? And while there are Facebook pages against Abel Maldonado and recall web sites against Adams and Cogdill, not one of these cowards has called for the Governor to be recalled a la Gray Davis. Hypocrites.