Bulworth Bashes the Terminator

How I love California. Its current governor, the former Mr. Universe and box-office champ of cyborg action flicks, might just face a campaign challenge not only from one-time Meathead Rob Reiner, but now Warren Beatty says he's "not ruling out" a run for the office.

Beatty's comments came after a keynote speech at the University of California at Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, an address in which he batted around the governor like a Bally pinball.

"It's become time to define a Schwarzenegger Republican. A Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who says he's a Schwarzenegger Republican.

"I wanted to be rooting for Arnold, but he'd have to take some of that bombastic marketing and market the right thing -- telling rich people like me the truth: that with a state debt of $18 billion caused by energy deregulation and the dot-com bust, our taxes are going to have to be a little higher on the rich. No matter what that group of advisors say. And maybe only temporarily. Which is what both Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson did.

[...]

"It's not fooling anybody for him to run around raising money from Wall Street and K Street and rich Republicans all over the country who hope that if they can get this reactionary stuff started in California, they can get it done back in their own states and actually dismantle the New Deal, which they simplemindedly forget saved American capitalism, and then they can dismantle the fair deal, the new frontier, and the Great Society and the entitlements and the rights and the guarantees that make the society safe for everyone including the rich.

[...]

"As a public-policy dermatologist, you might advise that just a couple of minutes a day of sunlight would be more than helpful. And you might cut down on the photo-ops, the fake events, the fake issues, the fake crowds, the backdrops, the signs, the distractions, the scapegoats, the 'language problems,' the broken promises, the minutemen, the prevarications and put some sunlight on some taxes.

[...]

"Bipartisanship? We don't have it here. And let's not mistake the exploitation of the name of one of the greatest liberal families in American history for bipartisanship. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Kennedy Democrat.

"Stop trying to milk the illusion of bi-partisanship. You are a conservative Republican who likes to have a few Democrats around for show. This is good advice."

A potential Warren Beatty vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger contest for the governor's office in California? Now, that would be first-class entertainment. Do you have any idea how many female voters stand to be groped in the course of a single political campaign?

Political nookie, as we know it, would never be the same.