Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: GOP: Poor Campaign Doomed Schwarzenegger or Here Comes the SPIN
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks to supporters at his election night party in a Los Angeles file photo from Nov. 8, 2005. The across-the-board collapse of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot propositions came down to this: They were ideas with narrow appeal, further damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an unpopular messenger, the governor himself.
The ASSociated Press has GOP: Poor Campaign Doomed Schwarzenegger
The across-the-board collapse of Gov.Ar nold Schwarzenegger’s ballot propositions came down to this: They were ideas with narrow appeal, further damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an unpopular messenger, the governor himself.
And that’s just what his fellow Republicans said.
Ok, here comes the SPIN:
Kevin Spillane:
“What was defeated yesterday was a caricature of Arnold Schwarzenegger, not the reality of Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Republican consultant Kevin Spillane said Wednesday.
Despite his moderate views on social and environmental issues, “that’s not the tone and style and implicit message that came through in this campaign, and it played right into the hands of his opponents who depicted him as an ultraconservative Republican,” Spillane said.
Allen Hoffenblum:
“They ran a Republican campaign in a Democratic state, and they saw that yesterday in the results,” Republican analyst Allan Hoffenblum said.
“Why did they wait several months to respond to attacks from unions?” Hoffenblum asked. “They made bad political decisions all the way through.”
John Pitney:
Schwarzenegger, who has famously called some political opponents “girlie men” and said he was always kicking the butts of others, saw such remarks come back to haunt him, said John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College who once worked as an analyst for House Republicans.
“His rhetoric put off a lot of voters, Pitney said. “‘Girlie men’ was a very expensive laugh line.”
And then some anti-pundit rehetoric from Todd Harris, the Governor’s spokesman:
“We had to weather the beating that we took,” said campaign spokesman Todd Harris, who also complained of second-guessing by people he said weren’t directly involved.
“There were people who didn’t lift a finger to help in the fight for reform who will now take great joy in pointing out what we should have done differently,” Harris said.