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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (4596)	9/5/2003 1:10:23 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY The New Nixon? The specter of 1962 haunts Schwarzenegger's campaign. Friday, September 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110003967 Is Arnold Schwarzenegger another Ronald Reagan? Actually, his campaign is showing more similarities to Richard Nixon's failed 1962 bid for the California governorship--which ended with him telling the press corps, "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore"--than with Mr. Reagan's upset victory for the same office four years later. In 1962 Nixon made a critical miscalculation. The former vice president failed to win over his party's conservative grass roots. That opened up an opportunity for a real conservative to challenge him in the primary. Joe Shell, a dynamic state legislator from Los Angeles and a former University of Southern California football star, ended up winning 35% of the primary vote. Nixon never convinced Mr. Shell's voters that he'd govern from the right, if elected. Much of the GOP base refused to volunteer for Nixon and on Election Day stayed home, allowing the incumbent Democrat, Gov. Pat Brown, to win. Nixon, like Mr. Schwarzenegger now, was the celebrity candidate, and he initially remained coy about whether he'd enter the race. Mr. Shell entered the race thinking that Nixon wouldn't run, and he stayed in the race to fight for his conservative principles. Mr. Schwarzenegger has to be asking himself now if state Sen. Tom McClintock will play the same spoiler role that Mr. Shell did more than 40 years ago. Of course, Nixon was able to stage a stunning comeback only six years later, narrowly winning the GOP presidential nomination in 1968 and going on to win the White House. But he did that only by wooing influential conservatives like Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Clarke Reed of Mississippi. Also in 1968 a 21-year-old Austrian bodybuilder came to the United States. Mr. Schwarzenegger followed the presidential campaign by asking a friend to translate some of the TV coverage. "I listened to Nixon talk about free enterprise, opening up . . . trade with the whole world, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military," Mr. Schwarzenegger recalled this week in an interview with talk show host Michael Medved. "So I turned to my friend . . . and said, 'I am a Republican!' This is the philosophy I believe in." After Wednesday night's debate--which Mr. Schwarzenegger skipped--it is clear to everyone that Mr. McClintock is the conservative in the race. At that debate Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and the other two liberals in the race offered only the kind of solutions that put the Golden State in such disarray. Businessman Peter Ueberroth, a Republican, seemed unfocused. It was Mr. McClintock who presented a crisp conservative message that contrasted sharply with Mr. Schwarzenegger's vagueness. Mr. McClintock has clearly mastered the problems awaiting the next governor, and he has specific budget solutions in mind--promising to hold the line on taxes, cut spending and eliminate business-killing regulations. While Mr. Schwarzenegger isn't generating anything close to the level of hostility among conservatives that Nixon did in 1962, his refusal so far to debate or flesh out his views has made it difficult to win over the right. Only 39% of registered Republicans in the latest Los Angeles Times poll said they support him, although that number probably understates his strength. Mr. Schwarzenegger got off to a bad start early when campaign adviser Warren Buffett touched the third rail in California politics: Proposition 13. The Oracle of Omaha indicated that property taxes should be raised. Mr. Schwarzenegger has since repudiated Mr. Buffett's views, but the damage was done. Internal polls taken for another candidate found that half of Republicans identified Mr. Schwarzenegger with possible increases in property taxes. The candidate than fell into the same trap himself by refusing to sign a pledge not to raise taxes and said he might raise taxes in an "emergency." That sounded an awful lot like something Pete Wilson said in his successful 1990 bid for the governorship. Once in office, Mr. Wilson discovered an "emergency"--an economic recession--and raised taxes. Mr. Wilson is now a campaign adviser for Mr. Schwarzenegger. Mr. Schwarzenegger further gave Mr. McClintock an opening by waiting two weeks to reveal his views on gay marriage and other hot-button social issues. Having failed to nail down his conservative flank early, Mr. Schwarzenegger has less time now to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. For a first-time candidate, Mr. Schwarzenegger also demonstrates a surprising lack of interest in contacting the grass roots of the party. He jokes that "20 years of dinners with the Kennedy clan haven't made me a Democrat," but Republican leaders I spoke with say they haven't gotten a letter from him or an invitation to listen in on any conference calls. "All the signals you get are of a staff that wants to protect the candidate from something," says one head of a Republican volunteer group. "He should be willing to have contact with Republican activists who can't afford a high-dollar ticket to one of his fundraisers." Mr. Schwarzenegger's overly protective campaign has so far generated mostly puzzled anxiety among Republicans. If Mr. McClintock continues to do well in debates and Mr. Schwarzenegger continues to duck them and avoid specifics, their anxiety will only grow. If a focused Mr. McClintock remains in the race through the election, he very well could become another Joe Shell--a conservative hero who denied a moderate Republican an electoral victory. Pete Wilson, who has become a political mentor to Mr. Schwarzenegger, should remember all this. After losing in 1962, Nixon stormed out of his own news conference and sped off in a car driven by a young campaign worker named Pete Wilson. In the car that day, Mr. Wilson has said, the two men talked about how much conservative apathy hurt the campaign. If Mr. Schwarzenegger doesn't learn from this history, Mr. Wilson may have a similar conversation after next month's election.

To: calgal who wrote (4596)	9/5/2003 7:12:57 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 10965

Here are the new poll numbers from CNN. Bad news for Bush. Good news for Kerry. Bad news for Dean. More people said they would vote against President Bush (news - web sites) in 2004 than support him, according to a CNN-Time poll released Friday. The nationwide survey found that 41 percent said they would definitely vote against Bush while 28 percent said they would back the incumbent president. Twenty-five percent said they could vote either way. The same poll found people evenly split on the question of whether a Democrat can unseat the president. Last fall, 36 percent said they could see a Democrat winning the presidency and 49 percent said they could not. Among the Democratic candidates, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) and Howard Dean (news - web sites) were bunched at the top of the poll that showed more people undecided — 21 percent. Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who formally announced his candidacy Tuesday, had 16 percent; Lieberman, the Connecticut senator, was at 13 percent and Dean, the former Vermont governor, was at 11 percent. Rep. Dick Gephardt (news - web sites) of Missouri and Sen. John Edwards (news, bio, voting record) of North Carolina were at 7 percent. Al Sharpton was at 5 percent, Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record) of Florida was at 4 percent and Carol Moseley Braun was at 4 percent. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio was at 3 percent. The poll of 883 registered voters conducted Sept. 3-4 had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.