Thought's On Arnold's Speech Last Night

I first want to apologize for neglecting my posting duties. Last night's speech by Arnold did not set the world or the CRP Convention on fire. In fact it was a very average speech. The biggest appause during the whole speech was when he introduced Senator Tom McClintock. That spoke volumes of who the hard core activists really support. Those were my initial impressions and after speaking with other bloggers and party members, that seems to be the consensus. No one is thrilled about voting for Arnold, but it is the only choice Republicans have.

The speech itself started out by Arnold thanking Duf Sunheim, Senator Ackerman, and Kevin McCarthy. He said he was grateful for their friendship. He then went over the special election results and said that "we fought the good fight for reform". After hearing Frank Luntz this morning, Frank thinks that the election would have been sucessful had the language and presentation of the reforms been tweeked on paycheck protection. I think Mr. Luntz happens to be right about that. Oh well, what's done is done is done. We can't unring that bell. Anyways, Arnold then went on to share a quote about "there is no shame in losing, but shame in not trying". He says he is committed to fiscal discipline for the state. He talked about how bad things were before the recall two years ago. He got a big cheer for repealing the illegal alien drivers license bill. He says "we did not raise taxes the first two years"...that is a minumum benchmark for Republicans Arnold. Duh. You better not raise taxes or sign any illeagl alien drivers license bill or you will officially have no GOP principles! The next thing he talked about was fixing the workers comp system. For that I will give him a lot of credit. The burden on employers has definately gone down a little with these reforms and hence the business climate enhanced. He bragged about creating 500k jobs since he took office. That's debatable, whatever. He wants Jessica's law passed. Now we start getting to the real meat of his "vision" for his next term. I can sum it up in a few words....Bond, Arnold Bond. He wants to fix the infrastructure of the state with a massive $220 billion bond proposal. The scope of it is breathtaking. We conservatives know who will stuck holding the bag though on these bonds when the economy sours....the taxpayers. Wall Street financiers will not underwrite 220 billion in bonds without some sort of tax incorporated in the bonds. That is the dirty little secret that Arnold doesn't want citizens to know about. The rest of the speech was sort of anti-climactic. He spoke of his overall vision for the state some more. He wants to reform some more things, renew the party and the state. With that, this average speech came to a close.