ARNOLD: He was no girlie governor
What’s up with all the California bashing? Is it because the Vandals are planning on playing the USC Trojans in the LA Coliseum in 2015?!
Idaho party leaders can mock California and its last statewide Republican office holder or learn from his mistakes. It’s up to you.
We can’t dismiss a state where 1 in 8 Americans lives while we bask in our Idaho solitude where 1 in 225 Americans lives. We need each other. Especially those fat pensions and vacation dollars Californians spend here in Idaho.
Two writers claim Gov. Arnold wasn’t ever a conservative? False! Arnold passed the most sweeping workman’s comp/tort reform legislation in 2003-4 that it’s virtually impossible to find a workman’s comp attorney there anymore.
Buoyed by his success he proceeded to insult his adversaries when they blocked his reforms. He called them “a bunch of girlie men.” So he sought to bypass them altogether by calling a special statewide election with five propositions in 2005.
Prop 73 was a pro-life minor parent notification law, prop 74 was about dismissing bad teachers by extending probationary period to reach tenure, Prop 75 was about employee consent for withholding dues for political purposes, Prop 76 put a lid on school spending, and prop 77 would stop gerrymandering legislative districts by the majority party.
All five went down in flames, after which Arnold hired a cigar smoking lesbian as his chief of staff and the rest is history. Arnold’s indiscretions were significant, but no worse than South Carolina’s GOP Gov. Mark Sanford, who was recently elected to Congress yet went to see an Argentinian lover on a state airplane when he was governor.
Ronald Reagan once said, “Never turn an adversary into an enemy.”
And Reagan carried 49 states in 1984 with 60 percent of the white vote. Well guess what? Romney carried 60 percent of the white vote too in 2012 and we saw how that went.
It’s time to quit burning bridges! There are 49 other states that can’t ever be mono-cultural Idaho.
MIKE RENO
Post Falls