Why Has Schwarzenegger Become a Girlieman?

After initially running for governor of California as a moderate conservative, Arnold Schwarzenegger has made several moves to the left, and can now be considered a RINO or even a closet Democrat. To conservatives, this move to the left seems all too common. We in Florida are watching the same thing happen with our recently elected Republican Congressman Vern Buchanon (from Katherine Harris old district), who has been voting with the Democrat majority on most important issues, and we have seen it happen often with others elected as Republican conservatives.

What is it about politics and conservatives that causes this slippage time after time? Two things are at work here. First, it’s hard to be a conservative. Conservatives deal with reality, and real life problems are tough to solve and require maintaining an inner toughness. When a conservative gets to Washington he finds that all the journalists, all the permanent staff, all the residents, all the party-givers and all the academics are feel-good liberals. It takes resolve to be on the outs with all these people that you wish would like you. A conservative soon finds out, though, that these people hate you; they don’t just disagree with you, they hate you. They want to see you destroyed. They want to ‘Bork’ you. It is almost beyond my capability to understand how President Bush has been able to stand up and maintain his principles and his resolve in the face of the incredible vitriol that has been directed at him from the left.

Second, I think the problem also has more to do with human nature than with politicians. Since the end of World War II, when liberals have gained political power they have usually made a fine mess of things. Democrats got us involved with Vietnam, and Nixon was elected largely because he promised an honorable way out; with Carter came the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis and the energy shortage, followed by Reagan; with Clinton came dishonor in the White House, the attempt to impose a draconian National Health Plan and huge tax increases, followed by Bush.

But then, after Republicans take over, cut taxes and try to return some measure of control over our own lives to individuals, people forget the damage that liberals do – and start listening to the promises and the criticisms being put forth by Democrats and magnified and repeated over and over by the mainstream media. Their promises always sound so good and have such terrible unintended consequences. Give welfare to unwed mothers - and the black fatherless children rate jumps to 75%; ban DDT - and millions around the world die of malaria; eliminate all control over what goes out to children on TV and movies - and children begin gunning down other children; eliminate mental health facilities and go overboard in protecting the “rights” of the mentally ill - and then fill our Dunkin Donuts with poor, confused, homeless wretches. The problem is that voters start forgetting those consequences, start listening to the lies and the promises, and Republicans start getting nervous about sticking to their principles.

If you factor out the Iraq War, what happened in 2006 was a combination of three things: relentless hammering by Democrats and their willing allies in the mainstream press, bungling and ineffectiveness by Speaker Haskert and by Majority Leader Frist, and corruption and overspending by the Republican Congress – which was a betrayal of their conservative principles.

We are going to have to work very, very hard to keep the White House and to regain control of the Congress in 2008; if we are successful, every one of us conservatives out there in the heartland is going to have to keep closer watch on what our politicians do to prevent another electoral disaster in 2010, and several 9/11’s thereafter.