MY NEW HERO
Arnold Schwarzenegger
No, no one’s playing hockey in Hell…but I’m about to give a solid shout out to a Republican….
I expend a good deal of time, energy, and column inches savaging Republicans, who are richly deserving of said disdain. From my perspective, there can be little doubt that the GOP’s concerns and sympathies lie with the wealthy and powerful and not the vast majority of the American Sheeple who elect them. The GOP is devoid of facts, principles, ideas, and compassion…and thus richly deserving of opprobrium and ridicule. Were the GOP to get serious and act as if they care about the American Sheeple, I might think differently. They’ve proven themselves incapable of serious governance, however, and so things will continue as they have. Today’s GOP is a joke, plain and simple. If you don’t believe me, just listen to their talking points. Whoever writes them really should be working for Letterman.
Well-deserved ridicule aside, and as uncharacteristic as this might seem for me, I’m going to give a tip o’ my Minnesota Twins cap to California Governor (and Republicans) Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some might see his speech as the political equivalent of pissing into the wind. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to see a Republican call out Big Business for putting their interests above the environment and the public good. Few Democrats have ever given a speech so honest and heartfelt. Listen to it, and I think you’ll agree. Schwarzenegger is brutally honest in calling out corporations by name for their attempts to buy votes and negate the public interest. (Say a big “thank you” to the Supreme Court, because is the sort of assault on democracy that the Citizens United decision has given us.)
Anyone care to remind me why Schwarzenegger isn’t a Democrat??
Well done, Governor. It’s just too bad that his speech was accompanied by a (not so) deafening roar of silence from the Right. This isn’t to say that there aren’t Republicans out there willing to stand up and do the right thing for the right reasons. The sad thing, of course, is that this sort of good and decent Republican is damn hard to find these days. Party discipline tends to beat the decency out of even the most reasonable of Republicans. Arnold Schwarzenegger should be applauded for having the balls to say the right thing in the right manner, and for the right reasons. What’s depressing is that his own party is so solidly on the side of those attempting to undermine and purchase democracy for their own benefit.
