The Arnold Post (Cobbled together from comments on
Roger L. Simon's Blog)
McClintock's decision to stick in the race and split the conservative Christian (i.e. nutbar) wing of the Republican Party means that Arnold owes them nothing. Splitting the nutbars who do not care if they elect anything away from the Republican Party is a huge shift. It redefines party affiliations and changes everything.
I've met the nutbar wing of the Republican Party up here in Oregon and they scare me. These people never check their facts, only act from emotion, and are incapable of making the kinds of compromises that are needed to make good government. Pushing them out of politics is striking a blow for liberty and rational liberalism everywhere. I disagree with the people stating that McClintock won this because he convinced the conservative Christians to an eternity of dying on the cross. We've checked the records and that only worked for one guy.
I do not see myself becoming a nutbar Christian in the next ten years. My education is much better than that because I studied religion as part of my liberal arts degree. I had as many theology and philosophy hours as I did history hours. I view detailed research and intellectual discussion as an essential to establishing a worldview. In other words, to the nutbar Republicans, I am viewed as the anti-Christ.
Providing rational centrists with the key to unlock the shackles the nutbars have put on them is valuable. People like to feel at least a little bit safe, and the "stolen election" screaming moved a lot of people away from the left just before 9/11. People like to feel decent, and Pat Robertson's denouncing of America as deserving to be attacked moved a lot of people away from the right just after 9/11. Arnold was the first person to make a plausible case for centrist rationality and internal compromise.
I am sick and tired of being cast as the polar opposite of anyone I disagree with. I am furious over being caricatured because my position is different. I have been a centrist for decades now, disgusted with the hyperbole of the left and the right. I want to be evaluated for what I say in context to what I am talking about and be confronted with my adherence to logic and facts instead of dogma and hysteria. I want to thank Governor Schwarzenegger and
Roger L. Simon for letting me be myself, again.
