Last week I pointed favorably to Arnold's prison reform plan. This week I'm reminded he's got plenty of the Republicanisms in him that I don't like. To deal with California's budget crisis, he proposes cutting spending on the poor while preserving tax breaks for the well-off. What's worse, writes Kevin Drum:
Schwarzenegger actively created a huge part of the budget crisis himself. Just as George Bush seems to hope that tax cuts will create an artificial crisis atmosphere that allows him to pursue pet projects like Social Security privatization, Schwarzenegger campaigned on a pledge to cut the auto license fee. This slashed $3-4 billion in revenue, an amount that would go a very long way toward eliminating California's problem.... He campaigned on a promise never to cut education funding and went back on his word almost immediately. He campaigned on a promise to end "crazy deficit spending," but adopted Gray Davis's deficit spending plans almost verbatim within months. He's made some interesting proposals, and has demonstrated some genuine charisma and political talent, but in the end his only real tactic seems to be the same one George Bush loves so much: convincing the public that everything is a crisis and he's the only one who can deal with it.
