I certainly agree with Mike Der Manouel’s post below — which is that virtually no member of the public will be watching this one and only Gubernatorial debate between Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As a matter of fact, if the debate were not being sponsored by the California Broadcasters Association, I would suggest that it simply be videotaped, stuck up on the web, and the thousand or so people that would want to watch the whole debate can just surf on over to the CBA website and check it out — A few hundred reporters, a couple hundred campaign hacks, and other random assorted folks who are tuning in to see "The Terminator" make mincemeat out of "The Accountant."
As for me, I am sure I will not watch it live. After all, it IS on a Saturday night, which means that one would have to ruin a perfectly good weekend night out to see it. And with Schwarzenegger’s monumental double-digit lead in the polls, the only entertainment will be watching Angelides try multiple "Hail Mary" passes in an attempt to gain some traction.
If you are intent on watching the show, then I suggest you get out a pen, and you can have fun trying to add up the number of times that The Accountant tries to make Arnold Schwarzenegger out to be the President. We’ll hear "George Bush" a lot, as well as a lot of rhetoric about the war.
But as long as you have your pen out anyways, you can join me and other Republicans in tallying up how many times the Governor mentions Tom McClintock, Steve Poizner, Tony Strickland, Chuck Poochigian, Bruce McPherson, and Dick Mountjoy.
We’ve already seen in the last week that Arnold Schwarzenegger will use some of his built-up cache of support from the electorate to push his ill-advised mega-bond borrowing package. That is to be expected…
But what I will be looking for tonight is whether will use this debate as a key opportunity to highlight that he is running at the top of a ticket filled with very capable GOP candidates. Of course he can’t trip all over himself bringing up his running-mates in a Gubernatorial debate, but a key mention of some of the down-ticket Republicans will send an important message to the thousand-or-so debate watchers. The goal — to be supportive enough of the GOP ticket that the articles that come out in the newspapers analyzing the debate make mention of it. I look forward to highlighting it on this page!
In a final message to Phil Angelides — go grab Bozo the Clown to help you with debate preparations. As I have said before, he doesn’t know anything more than you do about running state government. But, he is funny, and frankly if you could manage to just be funny tonight, it would be a win for you, and make the evening more tolerable to those who have to watch the debate.