I don’t watch Dr. Phil, but I have been told that one of his favorite sayings is that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.  If I have his saying wrong, I apologize in advance.  But I like the sentiment, because it is absolutely true.  One of the best ways of predicting what a politician will do in the future is what he or she has done in the past.  That is not an absolute test, but it is not a bad one.  Look at what someone has done, and that will tell you what they will do.

That is one of my problems with Meg Whitman.  I have no idea what she would do in office, because I have no indication of what she has done in the past.  The last politician I took at face value without a history was Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Now, I will admit, I didn’t endorse Schwarzenegger because I thought he would be a great conservative.  However, at the time I endorsed him, He was in a dead heat with Cruz Bustamante.  Since conservatives had started the recall, I believed that a recall that ended with a Cruz Bustamante governorship would be a disaster for the movement.  I know that Tom McClintock never forgave me for what I did, but I didn’t do it for him or for anyone else, I did it for the movement’s future.

Schwarzenegger promised me (when he spoke at the Mission Inn in Riverside in August of 2003), however, that he wouldn’t pass any more laws to ban guns (he did), that he would appoint judges that I would like on the pro-life side of things (he didn’t), and that he would never raise taxes (he did).  I didn’t think he would do those things, so I endorsed him.  In retrospect, I still think I did the right thing, the conservative movement succeeded in the recall, but I have had to explain to my conservative friends over and over again why I did the right thing.  Schwarzenegger didn’t make it easy.

Poizner has not been a great conservative in the past.  To claim otherwise would be engaging in a chemically induced delusion.  He has however engaged conservatives.  He talks to them, he listens to them, he learns from his political mistakes (most of which have to do with his flirtations with his politically liberal friends).  Yes, he has done some stupid things in the past, and, quite frankly, he will do stupid things in the future (as we all do), but in the past, he has not run away from conservatives just because they push the envelope of political acceptability.  He accepts conservatives as an important part of the Republican coalition.

That is important to my conservative friends.  We win in politics by addition, by allying with people with whom we may not think are like us, but who will help us advance our agenda.  The hard part about building coalitions is how do you add coalition partners without sacrificing principle.  I don’t care what they say in their commercials, I care about what they do.  Poizner has demonstrated his allegiance to conservatives when he really didn’t have to.  I honor that.

Whitman may do that.  I just have no history on which to judge her.  As I said before, she wants to run as a conservative, I just hope she governs as one.  I don’t expect 100 per cent, but I do expect a lot better than Schwarzenegger.  If either candidate actually governs as a conservative, they will build a record on which they can be proud.  That will be better for them, and better for California

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.