There are a number of stories today about a likely scenario where a truly bi-partisan agreement* in Sacramento may lead to the California Presidential Primary being moved up to the first Tuesday in February in 2008, clearly increasing the relevance of Californians in influencing the selection of Party nominees for President and Vice President. I’ll be weighing in on this issue later in the week. Unspoken of in these stories, however, is a subtext that I have heard bantered around that by having a statewide Presidential election in February, 2008, separate from legislative elections that would still take place in June, legislators hope to take a crack at loosening California’s term limits laws, passed by the voters, which say that a legislator can serve only three terms in the Assembly, and two terms in the Senate. I can only say that the legislative placing a measure on the ballot to relax their own terms is a fools errand. Term limits are popular with the electorate, and there is simply no practical way voters are not going to see a move such as this to be anything but self serving. I guess language could be placed in the measure that says that relaxed limits will only apply to legislators elected for the first time after its passage — but somehow I don’t think that we’ll see that in there.
Apparently the Governor has been augmenting the salary of key close aides with bonuses from his campaign funds. I don’t inherently have a problem with this, per se. Other than I have my usual ongoing problem with the idea that many senior aides (the top aides, as a matter of fact) to my Republican Governor… aren’t Republican! As a matter of fact, the Governor’s Chief of Staff famously (or is that infamously) was the Executive Director of the California Democrat Party, and of the California Abortion Rights Action League! Even more insulting to those of us who toiled in the recall because we wanted a CHANGE from the ways of Gray Davis, Kennedy heads a list of senior Gray Davis administration officials who now hold major positions of power and influence in the Schwarzenegger Administration. If you have to wonder why so many liberal policies are coming from the Governor, maybe we shouldn’t look any further than the liberals on his staff? Arnold Schwarzenegger should take the opportunity to embrace Republican principles once again — such as freedom, liberty, individual freedom and responsibility, and an embrace of capitalism and the free market system. And, he should dump the Democrats from his senior staff. OK, it has been a while since I had jumped on this soapbox — so now I have it out of my system for at least a little while. Not terribly ‘post-partisan’ of me…
Have a great Saturday!
* – Truly bi-partisan meaning that Democrats and Republicans come together to support something. As opposed to what we have had with the Governor’s "bi-partisan, party of one" where he sides with legislative Democrats to cut deals on liberal policies, and leaves GOP legislators, and GOP principles, in the dust.
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