AllWhacked
Senior member
- Nov 1, 2006
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Originally posted by: Craig234
I could talk about how you're wrong on the history of the older democrats, but won't bother. Let's just say JFK was the most anti-war democrat of the last century IMO.
Instead, I'm going to say two things. One, we don't need a president with the kind of balls George Bush has, or John McCain. We don't need out military overused.
Second, as a politically engaged native Californian, you don't understand, IMO, at all why Schwarzeneggar was elected.
The whole scheme to recall the current governor that paved the way for a special election for Arnold was the scheme of a few connected Republicans, who perversely used the *Republican*-linked scandal of Enron, which the governor was doing the right thing on by blocking a corrupt settlement that let them off the hook, to get angry voters blaming him and voting for Arnold, who was secretly closely linked to Enron, one of a handful of Republican leaders who was invited to and attended a secret strategy session with them.
The big factor for Arnold was not 'tough', but a combination of the dynamics of the election, which split the vote between 135 candidates instead of having primaries, and his unique public image as a movie star - remember, Ronald Reagan was, too, and he was also Governor of California, and the way the right mostly united behind Arnold (there was one 'real conservative', McClintok who split off a small number of votes), while Democrats did not put up anyone with the public image of Arnold.
It was basically voter idiocy and ignorance IMO. 'Tough'? The voters weren't looking for Arnold to conquer Nevada.
They got what they deserved, a hypocrite who ran on promises of being extremely 'clean' of any money and above politics, who had plenty of his own money and did not need any of those dirty contributions his predecessor accepted - and then went on to take more donations from all kinds of industries than his predecessor had.
I'm not saying JFK was a war-monger, though during FDR's time people accused FDR of being one. What was great about JFK was that when voting for him, you did not get a sense that he secretly loathed the country. That's the feeling i get from most liberal candidates today. I don't think Obama loathes the country, but I do get this vibe when I see he went to church for 20 years with Jeremiah Wright. And before I go further, I actually get a kick that he might secretly be an angry black man inside. I was a history major with an emphasis on African American history. At one point I wanted to pursue a history degree and teach black history and be the angry asian professor.
But I digress, most republicans don't look at a candidate and think geez, he'll get us into a war, lets vote for him. They see if he has the mettle to lead us safely through a war if we ever get into one. Currently, we are in a war and when compared next to each other, I just don't see Obama ready to be a wartime president. He comes off as Clintonesque (adverse to risk), which is fine during peace time, but I didn't approve of Clinton's over reliance on cruise missiles to enact foreign policy. His over use of them and failure to actually kill the right people, may have accelerated 9/11 [Source]
If this was 1992, I would feel more comfortable voting for a guy like Obama. But it is not and thus at the end of the day, Americans want someone with balls. Arnold won because of star power, that I agree. But if he was some liberal Sean Penn type, he probably would have lost. The republicans most certainly would not vote for that type and I think most conservative Democrats would also not vote for that type if given a reasonable alternative.
