Via Calpundit, I note that Bill Simon is beginning to air commercials attacking… Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon (search) will run the first radio ads directly attacking GOP front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger (search) by focusing on the issue his economic advisor raised by suggesting Californians might need to pay higher property taxes.
The radio spots have been cut and may begin airing on California talk radio stations as early as Sunday night, Simon spokesman K.B. Forbes told Fox News early Sunday.
Forbes would not say how much the campaign spent on the radio adds or which stations would carry them, but did say the anti-Schwarzenegger spots would run “on major talk radio stations up and down the state.”
There is a reason California is dominated by Democrats- the California GOP is fundamentally unfit to lead. If you can not learn from your past mistakes, can not learn to run a palatable candidate and have both wings of the party come together, you simply do not have the presence to run anything more complicated than a lemonade stand.
the talking dog
Bill Simon is just a loser– but he’s a California Republican kind of loser. He beat Riordan in the primary, and now, maybe he’ll beat Riordan’s friend Arnold in the runoff, and Calfornia will get to have as its governor the only man in the state who couldn’t beat Gray Davis before!!
This is not a hard one– the Simon people figure Davis is toast, so its winner take all, and maybe the moderates will split among Bustamante and Arnold and others, and the hard-ass conservatives will unite behind Simon.
Or perhaps once again, Gray Davis is paying for Bill Simon ads– on the prospect that only a Simon governorship may induce Californians to vote “no” on the recall!!!
Ricky
Going from Davis to Simon is as big a step up as going from Jon Koncak to “the whopper Billy Paultz as your center.
If Simon/McClintock don’t drop out (unless the polling changes drastically) the GOP deserves to be a 3rd party in CA (behind the DNC & the CCCP).
Owen
I really don’t even know why Arnold is considered a Republican. He says he’s a fiscal conservative, but he now might raise property, and other, taxes.
JKC
Owen-
“Fiscal conservative” means you run balanced budgets; it does not mean you blindly slash taxes without regard to expenditures.
Robin Roberts
No one has been “blindly slashing taxes without regard to expenditures” in California. Quite the opposite.
Ricky
Well, I’m one of those folks who likes a ‘big tent’ & would much rather have a moderate like Arnold in the GOP than have someone in the other party (Zell Miller) who is more in line with my thinking. If Arnold is 1% to the right of Gray Davis (he is) and has a chance of winning (let’s face it, Simon & Mclintock do not right now) and it could open up the chances of the GOP attracting voters for the next few decades, I’m all for it.
It’s the big picture I’m looking at, and right now there are simply too many people who won’t vote for the GOP because they’re Republicans and have been raised that way. Maybe Arnold can cause some folks to take a second look?
Steve Lassey
Arnold’s slipping vs. Bustamante, and announcing “I won’t rule out a tax increase” won’t cause the voters to make any distinction. Perhaps Simon and Schwarzenegger could make common cause, run as Gov and Lt Gov and actually give the voters a reason to choose them. Arnold has fallen victim to the “raise taxes and raise revenue” fallacy. With businesses already leaving the state revenues would probably drop even faster after a tax increase. Not that there is a real chance of significant economic growth in California with a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. We know from the open mike mishap what the Democratic strategy will be — stonewall and point fingers.
pj
If Arnold was a moderate CA republican in the mold of Wilson, Fong, or even Campbell, the conservatives would rally around him as the best shot at winning a statewide office.
But he has proven he is not worthy of being called even a “fiscal conservative”. He is a liberal, he will not rule out tax increases, listens to Buffet and Lowe as his advisors, and his pet initiative expanded government spending on afterschool activities in a state that already spends more than any other on schools. Further, he pushed it through when we already knew there was a budget crisis. He’s further left than Davis is for goodness sake, and probably further left then Bustamante too.
The only thing his election would do is nail the coffin shut on the GOP as the party of small govt (hell he would make Bush look conservative on fiscal issues which takes some work.) Oh, he would also show the stupidity of electing unqualified people to office. He will not bring new voters into the GOP any more than Ventura made the independence party viable. People who vote for celebrities do so on personality and are not going to just sign up with the party. He also will not magically make Bush competitive in CA, which is out of reach in all but the absolute landslide election.
RW
If he is indeed a “liberal”, why has he been working for and endorsing GOP conservatives for over these many years? Remember, he endorsed 41 over Clinton (who will hardly be mistaken for a Kennedy liberal).