I don’t know, it seems like he’s doing some good things for the state of California, but his speech seems underwhelming. The girlie man, the I’ll be back. His Four More Years chant sounded creepy and robotic
I though the reaction to the girlie man was funny, at least on C-span. They had it on old people who seemed to care less, then realized it was a point they were supposed to go wild over, so they jumped up about 5 seconds late.
They sure do talk about Kerry alot. Which goes for their site as well, the bush site actually has a kerry media link off their main page, Kerry doesn’t link to a bush anything on his page.
But I guess if you keep repeating that the democrats are defining themselves by Bush, and the republicans by ideas - you will eventually believe it.
Chet
I thought the speech was really good, especially in comparison to McCain’s and Giuliani’s, which I thought were kind of “meh,” and certainly better than Laura Bush’s. I won’t even bring up the cheesy Vegas lounge act that was Jenna and Barbara Bush.
Arnie’s speech was Reaganesque in its optimism – he didn’t actualy use the phrase “city on a hill,” but he might as well have. And it’s that kind of fervent optimism that is a hallmark of the most successful pols from both parties, from FDR to Kennedy to Reagan to Clinton.
I keep thinking back to the fact that Reagan’s career as a national political figure was launched by a tremendous speech he gave at the 1964 RNC, and wondering if, assuming Arnie keeps this kind of pitch up, folks won’t start talking about amending the constitution to remove that pesky natural-born citizen requirement.
I thought the first part of Arnie’s speech was better than the last. The twins came across as total twits, and Laura Bush seems a little doped up and simple.
The twins were painful. But Steele (on earlier) was maybe the worst speaker of both conventions. The way he moved and paced his speech was like he was terrified of the microphone.
Chet
It’s interesting that so few people seem to be looking at the children of the head of the party of “family values” and drawing conclusions about him, based on their behavior and demeanor.
Really? Well fortunately people won’t be voting for his children. But might I ask how exactly are two college girls supposed to behave in modern
times? They are attending Yale and sound like nice enough girls and at least their father isn’t out humping everything that moves like our beloved former president Clinton. Anyway, the Arnold speech was excellent and I thought he explained nicely how he came from Austria (which developed a crummy Euro-socialist system) to this land of REAL opportunity and how the democratic candidate at the time here in the US (1968 I believe he said) sounded more like the politicians in a nation he just got away from.
Arnold also illustrated, along with McCain and Juliani the diversity of the modern republican party. It is in fact becoming more diverse and inclusive than the democratic party when it comes to strong disagreements with the platform views. For instance, when was the last time a pro life speaker was allowed at a democratic convention? I’ll answer: its been close to 15 years. Yet we have seen at least THREE pro choice speakers at this republican party and in fact on almost every major republican platform issue many republicans have strong differing views and constantly debate them amoungst themselves. There is very little, if any tolerance these days for such views in the democratic party. Where was Zell Miller at the convention? Oh shit I forgot he is speaking at the Republican convention due to the democrats intolerance.
It surely wasn’t a mistake of the Ahnold to come to the land of REAL opportunity where it is common for actors to become REAL politicians. And you better get some REAL political education before you write more of this blabla about those commie Europeans.
The entire point of the platform is to present one unified vision, so the speaker is sort of irrelevant, particularly when the speeches are approved and re-written by the DNC and RNC. It has to stay on message.
You really bought the perception the Republicans would like you to have. Those pro-choice Republicans weren’t really up there stumping for choice, were they? Some are even pro gay marriage, but that’s not on the platform either. And do you think Democrats would have a pro-life person up there contradicting the Democratic platform? No way.
But more importantly, the party isn’t controlled by McCain and Guiliani’s somewhat more moderate views. (And McCain, as far as I know, is pro-life.)
Yet we have seen at least THREE pro choice speakers at this republican party and in fact on almost every major republican platform issue many republicans have strong differing views and constantly debate them amoungst themselves.
The key is “amongst themselves.” Do you really think the Democrats don’t discuss issues in private?
No one sees these debates so they may as well never happen. But there’s little question that Republicans are better at staying with one, singular message than Democrats.
Where was Zell Miller at the convention? Oh shit I forgot he is speaking at the Republican convention due to the democrats intolerance.
And Ron Reagan spoke at the Democratic convention due to the Republican intolerance for stem cell research. I think the Democrats win.
But really, using Zell Miller as an example of intolerance is brilliant. So where’s the right-wing of the Republican party? Why isn’t Trent Lott speaking? Or how about a moderate like Colin Powell?
Face it: both conventions are just theater to get the word out about their man. They don’t represent the true nature of either party. They represent the one they want the public to perceive. And as your message illustrated, it works.
Powell’s interesting. He’s made it clear he won’t be around for a second term and didn’t show up for the convention. He also canceled an appearance at the Olympic Games. Was it the mass protests about the visit? Was it that the Iraqi soccer team wouldn’t likely make themselves available as props?
Without Powell around this administration is even more screwed. I guess he was tired of getting trotted out as the ‘moderate’ face of the Bush administration while getting sidelined or ambushed about policy by the rightwingers. One thing that most of the moderates on display at the convention have in common is the desire to get elected President. Either they’ve run before, McCain, and might well run again or like Schwarzenegger and Giuliani they’ve dropped plenty of hints they’d love to run given half a chance. So they come to the convention and genuflect to build credibility for themselves within the party while serving as propoganda tools for a platform and a candidate they don’t agree on much with. My respect can only go down for all of them. McCain’s a sellout. He knows what kind of pondscum Rove is and what kind of man Bush is. That guy should have been wearing the organgrinder’s monkey costume. To think I used to support him for his straightshooting ways.
That’s not a very good example. The Pro-Life position is tied almost exclusively to traditional religion and the culture that accompanies that, so it pushes people into the Religious Right corner. The Pro-Choice position is much more universal… it could be based on anything and the only thing it disimplies is a strong traditional religious position.
It definitely makes sense however that the Republican position, as it bows to Neocon sentiment, will be broad based. Neocons themselves come from a broad background, the only necessary restriction is that they be Pro-West and don’t mind a lot of blood to create a worldwide monopoly for the West. That covers everything from lovers of democracy to Capitalists to patriots to traditional republicans who don’t understand or care that they’re being coopted, perhaps because they don’t care much about international affairs.
This last point, to me, is the most interesting. America has always been arrogant and myopic, and perhaps this is finally being exploited. Few Republicans even discuss the Neocon Agenda, much less seem to care about it. Perhaps they really DON’T care about it. If the wars happen in sandy alien places and a Republican domestic agenda is pursued (other than the high taxes necessary to levy the wars), the Republicans are more than willing to turn a blind eye to international events.
Insert OMG SO UGLY here.
Or a reference to Clinton’s dog will suffice.
And just to continue the pile-on, even conservative commentator Tucker Carlson noted how non-representative the speakers are. From CNN:
[Insert obligatory “CNN is a left-wing rag, so of course they’d say that” message.]
Cheverly, Md.: What’s with the blatant Christian Cross embeded in two tone wood to the right hand side of the Pulpit, I mean lecturn on the stage. Is a not a clear message that there is a vast disrecpancy between his view, his party’s views, their global view and his presumed responsibility as an unbiased leader of a secular nation.
Lucian Perkins: Sharp eyes.
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/04/kaiser090104.htm
This is from a live chat at the Washington Post today with an editor and reporter up in NY. Did anyone else see this? Is it for real?
So it turns out that Arnold’s conversion moment, the televised Nixon / Humphrey debates, never actually happened.
IIRC there were no presidential debates between Kennedy/Nixon '60 and sometime in the 1970s (Ford/Carter 76 maybe?). I read about this some time ago when Arnie was running for governor and was amazed he pulled out the same anecdote here at the RNC. Unless it was some other kind of Humphrey/Nixon thing he saw at the time.
The irony is that Schwarzenegger and Bush ideologically are almost diametrically opposed. Bush is a big-government social-conservative while Schwarzenegger is a fiscal-conservative who is liberal on social issues. Politics does make for strange bed-fellows.
First of all, even if he had said debates, this would be an incredibly pedantic point.
Secondly, at least in last night’s speech, he never mentioned a debate:
He says he watched the “race” on TV. He doesn’t say this all happened in a debate, or even that it happened on the same evening.