Trump the good Republican

Despite the melodramatic meltdown of the current GOP nominee, I still see Trump more as Republican continuity than any kind of aberration.

Digby reminds us of the Schwarzenegger 2001 precedent on treatment of women in This is not the first "star" politician who did this Hullabaloo 10/08/2016.

There was a bit of a thuggish atmosphere about the Schwarzenegger rallies, too, Although nothing on the level of Trump's White Power rallies. Here's what I mean, from my earliest blogging days: California Recall: Georgy Russell Protests (?) at Schwarzenegger Rally 10/06/2003; California Recall: Schwarzenegger in Pleasanton 10/06/2016.

Charlie Pierce in his distinctive way explains the Trumpian Continuity (America Has Been Waiting for Donald Trump Esquire Politics Blog 10/09/2016):

The campaign of El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago always has been a ridiculous campaign run by a ridiculous man who hijacked a ridiculous political party and now has rendered the entire American political system as ridiculous as the ferret he wears on his head. The ridiculous campaign, the ridiculous man, and the ridiculous political party cannot be considered separately. The ridiculousness of the political party, energized for decades by hayshakers, Bible-bangers, voodoo economists, jackleg preachers and the altogether crazy-assed elements of almost every political phylum, made it inevitable that a ridiculous man would run a ridiculous campaign one day. What very few people counted on was that the man and the campaign and the party would become so ridiculous that they would make everyone else ridiculous, too. Lord save us, he even managed to get the word "fuck" into the New York Fucking Times. Horseman, pass by! ...

... The Republican Party has been edging toward this catastrophe for 40 years, ever since it let goons like the late Terry Dolan help run its senatorial campaigns in the late 1970s. Dolan led to Lee Atwater, who led to Karl Rove and, altogether, they made Donald Trump not an aberration, but a culmination. It took into itself the debris of American apartheid. It allied itself with radicalized American Protestantism. It adopted a basic political philosophy of vandalism and nihilism. When confronted with an opportunity for human decency, such as in the case of Terri Schiavo, the party opted for cruelty. When presented an opportunity for political unity, such as in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, the party opted for the despicable in domestic politics and for the barbaric overseas. When handed an opportunity to change course, such as when the deregulated casino economy nearly destroyed the world in 2008, it doubled down on the basic economic philosophy that caused the wreckage in the first place. And when it became plain that the party was on the wrong side of history, such as the movement for marriage equality, it chose to work in the states through pestiferous god-botherers like Mike Pence, whose name Kelly Ayotte will write in for president.

My Utopian wish of the day is that every Democratic office-holder and Party official would for the next six months eliminate all forms of the word "bipartisan" from their vocabularies.

Nancy Pelosi, the actual San Francisco Democrat, was on Meet the Press this morning talking about how the House Republicans and Mike Pence supported the same awful policies on women's issues that Trump does and made her pitch for a House majority. But even she couldn't resist saying that one of the ways the Democrats are better than the Republicans is that the Democrats are more "bipartisan"!

The Republican Party is potentially facing a spectacular national meltdown. And the House Minority Leader from what must surely be about the safest Democratic Congressional district in the country (except maybe for Oakland-Berkeley) is promoting ... bipartisanship!

It boggles the mind.

But for the One Percent, Democrats promising Bipartisanship with an intransigent Republican Party is good news.

For everyone else, not so much.

Arnie makes the "News"

Arnie is big "news" in his native Austria.

Tags: schwarzenegger

California suing the feds over emissions

California Attorney General Jerry Brown

CNN is reporting that California is suing the federal government over the EPA's ruling to block California's more stringent tailpipe emissions standards. But they are spinning it as the Governor's idea: Schwarzenegger: California will sue federal government CNN.com 12/20/07.

I'm pretty dadgum sure that it's actually our State Attorney General Jerry Brown who's the driving force in this. Erica Werner reports in the AP piece, Dems to Probe EPA Ruling on Calif. Plan SFgate.com 12/20/07:

"It is completely absurd to assert that California does not have a compelling need to fight global warming by curbing greenhouse gas emissions from cars," California Attorney General Jerry Brown said. "There is absolutely no legal justification for the Bush administration to deny this request — Gov. Schwarzenegger and I are preparing to sue at the earliest possible moment."

It really does make a difference to have a fighting Dem like Brown in a position of power where he can force action on things like this. I just don't believe our "moderate" Republican Governor would be taking this position if he didn't have Brown keeping the heat on.

This is not Jerry's first action along those lines as AG (Attorney General Brown petitions EPA to regulate aircraft emissions by Jane Kay San Francisco Chronicle 12/05/07):

California Attorney General Jerry Brown and the other petitioners want the EPA to start imposing tough limits on plane emissions within six months. The federal government now does not regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft or any other vehicles, including cars and trucks.

"Global warming is such a big challenge that wherever we can reduce greenhouse gases, we must do so. The EPA has abdicated its responsibility in this area for years, and it won't do its job until it's legally required to do so," Brown said Tuesday.

Brown said it is "rather shocking that states and citizens have to go to court to do what the EPA is paid to do."

Tags: california politics, jerry brown, schwarzenegger

California Politics: Closing the $ Gap

The headline writer called it "Mississippification". But Alabama is the only other state Peter Schrag's column mentions.

Alabama, Mississippi, one of those Southern states. Yankees get confused about these things sometimes. :) You have to be patient with them.

But Schrag's column is a good one. He talks about how the recently-defeated tax referendum in Alabama was actively supported by Bob Riley, the conservative Republican Governor. Riley was criticized by Grover Norquist, an antitax zealot who currently has a lot of influence on the national Republican Party. He said, "Every Republican governor who thinks of raising taxes next year will walk past Traitors Gate and see Bob Riley's head on a pike."

Schrag uses Alabama's story as a lead-in to talking about the possible option For Schwarzenegger of using a large bond issue in California to close the current state deficit, coupled with "some sort of tight cap that would allow state spending to increase by no more than population and the rate of inflation."

The fact that such a measure is being seriously discussed is another sign of how common the idea has become in California that we could find some magic formula to put government on auto-pilot and solve the state's problems that way.
Schrag's analysis in part, is that, even with a $20 billion bond issue:

However it's done, it would, in the absence of any significant revenue increase, drive the state's battered public services further toward the bottom. If Schwarzenegger, as promised, were really to protect spending for K-12 education (spending that even now is woefully unequal to the state's own standards) the failure to increase revenues would almost necessarily suck more out of higher education and health programs for the poor, whose budgets have already been severely cut, and, very possibly, support for local governments as well. ...

Which is to say that the possibility of making California's school resources commensurate with the high standards we've set, or increasing access to the state's colleges and universities for the hundreds of thousands of additional students who'll be seeking places, is almost nil.

Tags: california politics, peter schrag, schwarzenegger

California politics: Schwarzenegger starts showing his hand

Gov.-elect Schwarzenegger made a media-conscious visit to the State Capitol Wednesday, announcing plans to call a special session of the legislature next month and announcing former Chevron lobbyist Patricia Clarey as his new chief of staff, a very key position. He indicated that he intends to use the special session to deal with workers' compensation reform (workers comp insurance expenses for business has gone up significantly) and to try to repeal the law allowing undocumented workers to get drivers licenses.

It seems he struck a confrontational stance:

If lawmakers don't agree with him on the driver's license law, he told them he'd actively support a proposed initiative that would ask voters to repeal the measure. ...

With powerful state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton -- a supporter of the driver's license bill -- sitting next to him, the Republican governor-elect said he had no hesitation about trying to undo legislation the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved with fanfare just weeks ago.

"We are looking at the total picture," Schwarzenegger said. "There's many, many different things that I want to change, that I will propose ... Budgets, to workers' compensation reform, the driver's licenses. There's endless amount of things. This whole package. And we go to work. That's what it's all about."

I'm not sure threatening the Democractic legislature with initiative battles on his first formal visit was the best way to start off. And a statewide vote on immigrants drivers licenses, with the new (immigrant) Governor taking an anti-immigrant position would get the Schwarzenegger administration started on an ugly note.

Clarey, the new chief of staff, worked for the Reagan and Bush I administrations and for former Republican Governor Pete Wilson. Her most recent job was overseeing lobbying activities on behalf of Health Net, a large HMO. Some observers seemed to damn Clarey with faint praise. Some described her as willing to work round the clock, which probably means, "she's an undisciplined workaholic." Democrats described her as "bright and straightforward," which probably means, "she's arrogant and rude." Time will tell.

Tags: california politics, schwarzenegger

California Recall: The Governator

When it comes to predicting election outcomes, it's kind of like the song says, "Sometimes you're the windshield/Sometimes you're the bug."

I stuck with my prediction of a month ago on the recall. I said the recall would lose, and Cruz Bustamonte would get the most votes among the replacement candidates. I guess I was off a little bit.

Tags: california politics, recall campaign, schwarzenegger

California Recall: Schwarzenegger in Pleasanton

Schwarzenegger and Bush (2006 photo)

Following up a bit on the report in the previous post, I found this Oakland Tribune account of Arnold's Saturday rally in Pleasanton. It doesn't mention the Georgy Russell incident. But the article describes it as a "raring, sometimes fractious crowd of about 4,000." The event was a rally at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, which is publicly owned:

Hundreds of Bay Area residents clamored around that platform, most of them decked out in buttons, hats, T-shirts and signs distributed by representatives from the "Join Arnold" campaign.

Admittance to the park was free, and those who were emblazoned with such items had no problem gaining access, once they passed through the metal detectors.

But outside the main gate, the crowd's political spectrum was as colorful as the recall race itself - and some of the pigments clashed.

And it does sounds like something strange was going on. "Security guards confiscated items that read 'Vote No on Recall' and told some anti-Schwarzenegger supporters, including a large group from the National Organization for Women, that they couldn't come in at all." Since someone could be against the recall and still favor Arnold as the replacement candidate, that seems pretty weird that they would confiscate "No on Recall" material.

They even tried to block a Pleasanton City Councilwoman and the wife of the mayor from going to the rally, because they had "No on Recall" paraphrenalia. They were eventually admitted. The councilwoman, Jennifer Hosterman, said:

"This is public property. I have as much right to hold up my sign that says 'Vote No on Recall.' This is a public place. If they had wanted a private affair, they should have rented private property," Hosterman fumed. ...

"This is my city, this is my back yard ... I was given special treatment because I'm a councilwoman, but all those other people weren't," Hosterman added.

This certainly seems to be odd conduct for a free public rally on public property. Because a public rally is, well, public, which means that you may have someone next to you who doesn't agree with you on everything. And may even say so out loud!

Tags: authoritarianism, california politics, georgy russell, recall campaign, republican party, schwarzenegger

California Recall: Georgy Russell Protests (?) at Schwarzenegger Rally

Georgy Russell

Georgy Russell, as in Georgy for Governor, claims she handled rather aggressively by Schwarzenegger supporters at an Arnold rally in Pleasanton, CA on Saturday:

Gubernatorial candidate Georgy Russell was pushed, shoved, hit and kicked yesterday by supporters of Arnold Schwarzenegger at a rally in Pleasanton CA. She was repeatedly called a "bitch" and one of the Arnold Supporters wrote on her clothing with a permanent marking pen. The felonious abusers, who claimed to be provoked by remarks from Russell, were near equal numbers of men and women and no one during the incident came to Russell's aid. Schwarzeneggar and his wife Maria Shriver witnessed the attack and neither said or did anything to stop the abuse.

I've been on both sides of scenes like that (although I don't recall ever being physically attacked). My local Catholic parish a few years ago invited an elderly Jewish Auschwitz survivor to speak to the church youth group. The event was open to the public, and several 50-ish neo-Nazis showed up and basically tried to heckle him down. The adults from the church shouted them down, and they shut up and let the speaker continue.

They tried some heckling afterward, but eventually left the hall. They stayed outside arguing and shouting, until someone finally called the police. The representatives of the Master Race then scurried away before having to explain themselves to the local cops.

Now, my feeling in that case was that, dammit, if our Catholic parish wants to invite a Jew to talk to us about the Holocaust, we're gonna do it! And these guys were obviously a bunch of cheap bullies, trying to initimidate an old man. It would take a better Christian than I to think that they didn't deserve to be soundly thrashed.

But that's not what happened. We shut them up without having to push them around. And, even though it wasn't intended by the organizers, the kids wound up not just hearing a lesson about a long-distant case of hatred getting out of hand. They were seeing the same hatred played out in front of them.

But at a political rally, if Schwarzenegger isn't man enough to handle a lone 20-something female heckler (and that assumes she was even heckling) - or if his supporters can't do a little counter-heckling without getting physical, well, that's just pathetic.

Tags: authoritarianism, california politics, georgy russell, recall campaign, republican party, schwarzenegger

California Recall: More on Arnold the "Antifa"

An English-language Reuters report has picked up on the Alfred Gerstl interview that I referenced yesterday.
In addition, another of Arnold's friends from Graz, Austria, has provided collaboration for Gerstl's story in USA Today:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Schwarzenegger's former Austrian trainer, gym owner Kurt Marnul, described how the young bodybuilder in the 1960s had used his menacing muscular physique to help break up neo-Nazi rallies at least twice near his hometown of Graz.

Marnul, 74, said he had told Schwarzenegger how he had seen Hitler's soldiers kill three people during World War II. Schwarzenegger had reacted with shock and anger, he said.

"He was so outraged — so filled with rage against the Nazi regime," Marnul said.
One assumes this will help diffuse any negative effect of the 1975 Hitler quote on Tuesday's election. And about a million absentee ballots had already been sent in by Friday. Last-minute revelations don't have quite the impact they did 10 years ago because of heavier absentee voting.

In the biographical sense, though, this story still presents some interesting questions. If Arnold was involved in militant anti-Nazi activity like this, why not use that every time the issue has come up? One possibility is that, after the Waldheim controversy of 1976, Schwarzenegger decided to keep quiet about his "antifa" activities because he thought it might be seen as a negative thing by conservative Austrians.

That assumes the accounts of his old friends are accurate. Gerstl's account in particular was specific enough to be verified or debunked by reporters or researchers with the time to check.

Tags: kurt marnul, schwarzenegger

California Recall: Arnie the "Antifa"?

The independent Vienna paper Der Standard is running a piece called "Antifa-Arnie?" "Antifa" is a German short form for "antifascist." A bodybuilding mentor of Arnold's, Alfred Gerstl, a former president of the upper house of the Austrian Parliament, says how he recruited Arnie in 1964 to help bust up a neo-Nazi demonstration when Arnie was 17. Their report is based on an interview with Gerstl in NU, a publication of Vienna's Jewish Kultusgemeinde, the main Jewish organization there.

The neo-Nazis were demonstrating in Arnold's home city of Graz, the capital of Styria province, against a local official of the People's Party, Austria's Christian Democratic party. According to Gerstl's account in NU, he organized Arnold and some other bodybuilders to, basically, kick their butts. The bodybuilders marched into the crowd of demonstrators. "There was a hubbub, and Arnold and the other bodybuilders chased them out of the Herrengasse [the street where they demonstrated]. (My translation)

Gerstl's father was a Jew who converted to Christianity in the 1920s, but that still made Alfred Jewish under Nazi race laws. Gerstl fought with Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia against the Germans, and a picture of Tito hangs on his wall, along with Arnold's.

Gerstl says Arnold's ex-Nazi father was glad to have Arnold be friends with Gerstl's son Karl. He also says that Arnold often had contact in Gerstl's house with people who had been persecuted by the Nazis, including Jews. He mentions that Albert Kaufmann, whose father was in the British army and who Gerstl counts today as his best friend, was also friends with Arnold in the 1960s.

Gerstl's account is certaily favorable to Arnold's disavowal of any Nazi sympathies. But it complicates Arnold's story. Not that people don't change back and forth during their lives. But when confronted with the Hitler quote this week, why didn't Arnold just say, "Hey, I was busting the heads of Austrian neo-Nazis back in Graz in the mid-1960s. I was no admirer of Hitler"? Conversely, if Arnold had been a militant "antifa" at 17 and had been well acquainted with Jews who had been persecuted during the Third Reich, it makes it all the more bizarre that he would describe an admiration for Hitler at 28 or 29 the way he has been quoted as doing.

Tags: alfred gerstl, schwarzenegger

California Recall: More on Arnie and the Hitler Quote

To expand on my earlier post, I do not suggest that we judge Schwarzenegger primarily by some stupid comment he made 28 years ago. The quotation does seem to be well sourced, though Arnold denies having said it.

But in the decades following 1975, he willingly lent some of his Hollywood glitz to two of the most genuinely ugly figures in Austrian politics, former President Kurt Waldheim and the far-right leader and Hitler admirer Jörg Haider. In recent years, he distanced himself from Haider. And, to his credit, in 2000, when there was an international outcry over the inclusion of the Haider-led Freedom Party in Austria's national coalition government, he also criticized the inclusion of Haider's party. But given his vaguely defined political positions, people have reason to worry that Arnold, despite his "moderate Republican" posture, may have quite an authoritarian streak.

And at least according to the polls, that may be an issue of immediate practical concern to Californians soon. The Field Poll, which I understand has the best track record on California elections, is also showing the recall leading by 57%-39%, with Schwarzenegger the leading replacement candidate with a 36%-26% lead over Bustamonte.

Since the recall election is the first of its kind in California, the polling organizations face more uncertainty than usual. Also, the short campaign season compared to the year-long marathon in a normal gubernatorial election could mean that voters' decisions are more in flux than they would normally be this close to the vote. We'll see after the votes are counted which polls did the best measurements.

Tags: california politics, california recall, jörg haider, schwarzenegger

California Recall: Arnie and the Hitler Quote

The "money quote" will be all over the place by Friday morning. Here's ABC's version:

ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.

Asked who his heroes are, he answered, "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

He is quoted as saying he wished he could have an experience, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say."

I was surprised to see that two very partisan Democratic bloggers, Atrios and Hesiod, both kind of shrugged this off.

Come on, guys, this isn't something to fold on. Austrians may not typically have the more cosmopolitan perspective educated Germans might have. But they aren't morons. An Austrian who would say something like that in 1975 knew darn well what he was saying. In fact, if he had said something like that on Austrian television, there would at least be speculation on whether he had violated the country's anti-Nazi laws.

I have a photo from the 08/18/94 issue of Die Presse (Vienna) showing a smiling Schwarzenegger shaking hands with Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider at the Austrian premiere of Arnold's film True Lies. The story is about the governor of Arnold's home province Styria making a deal with Haider's party over some hopelessly obscure office.

But it reminds me that Haider, notorious for his praise of the Third Reich, has never been publicly quoted as praising Hitler that explicitly. And Haider is a political pariah in most of the European Union for making less admiring comments about Hitler than that.

Austrian society tolerates anti-Semitism more than it should. But anybody that believes that was some harmless comment that any Austrian might have made in 1975 is way off base.

Tags: california politics, california recall, jörg haider, schwarzenegger

California Recall

The recall is an attempted political coup by the Republicans. Increasingly, that party's authoritarian tendencies - as embodied by people like Tom DeLay and John Ashcroft - makes them increasingly unwilling to accept the results of democratic elections.

Because the recall is such an unusual event, the public opinion polls are not as reliable a guide to the position of candidates as in a general election. For one thing, predicting the likely voters is more of a challenge.

My own position on the recall is NO.

In prediction mode, it seems to me that the numbers give Davis and Cruz Bustamonte a big advantage, despite "Ahnie's" high name recognition and novelty appeal. The Democrats tend to have a decided advantage now in statewide elections in California. And most Democrats that turn out to vote will be hearing "No on Recall, Yes on Bustamonte" for weeks before the election

I think the recall will fail. But suppose it wins by 55%. That means 45% vote no, and a large percentage of those will vote for Bustamonte. So after an intense campaign, and hopefully intensely partisan campaigning by the Democrats, Bustamonte is likely to wind up with 45%.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are in effect running a Republican primary in the same election. Simon won well over 40% in the general election against Davis last year, and he's campaigning hard. California Republicans tend to prefer red-meat partisans like Simon, which is why he beat out Riordan in last year's Republican primary. To the drooling-at-the-mouth Reps, Ahnie looks dangerously liberal.

Besides Simon, a couple of other Republicans are likely to draw some percentage of the vote. So even if you assume only 40% for Bustamonte, Schwartzenegger will have to win 68% of the non-Bustamonte vote to edge him out with 41% of the total. It will be like winning 68% in a highly competitive Republican primary.

I know that's a boring analysis of the California recall "circus." But it seems to me that's the real framework in which to see this recall vote.

- Posted by Bruce Miler 08/22/03

Tags: california politics, schwarzenegger