Tales from the Schwarzenegger War Room

On his website, David Ray lists his faves: "Sports, Girls, Politics, Christianity, Technology, Hanging out w/Friends, Music, College, Fishin, Surfin the World Wide Web, and all that kinda goodstuff."

And Arnold Schwarzenegger. On most things.

Ray was a young intern in the war room operation at the Schwarzenegger campaign. He trekked out from the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., earlier this summer and kept a blog of his experience on his other Website. Though his internship has ended, Ray's insights about Team Arnold on Ozarks Conservative are still up and they offer a nice insider snapshot of Schwarzenegger's campaign.

He is at times a freelance strategist for the governor. He once called Angelides a "wacko" and an "oddball," but he also doesn't like Schwarzenegger embracing gay Republicans.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger now has an opponent for governor of California in the general election. Wacko-liberal Phil Angelides defeated a slightly more moderate candidate in Steve Westly in the Democratic primary yesterday, even though turnout for the vote was a record low," he wrote.

The blog is sort of amazing, given the tightly controlled campaign run by generalissimo Steve Schmidt (see photo). They apparently were unaware that the 20-year-old intern was writing about his experiences while working in their war room doing research, monitoring media reports and whatnot.

Matt David, spokesman for the campaign, said about the blog: "He was a college student volunteering for the campaign this summer. He doesn't speak for the campaign." Ray did not return an e-mail to chat.

Ray seems to represent a lot of conservatives looking with dismay at some of Schwarzenegger's recent shifts to the center. He is not above giving the governor advice about protecting his base. Ray didn't like that Schwarzenegger would attend a Log Cabin Republican dinner with gay Republicans.

"Now, how much sense does this trip really make? Schwarzenegger is already suffering from an unenergized base that thinks he has moved way too far to the left since last year's special election trouncing, and to be honest, he has. He got blasted last week on the Hugh Hewitt show for selling out to the conservative base. This isn't going to help that problem one bit. In fact, it will only hurt it.... Stick to your guns, Arnold, or you won't be back."

Ray writes that he didn't like an animated cartoon that got passed around that showed right-wingers like Ann Coulter as Schwarzenegger's friends. He says he understands why the cartoon would appeal to Angelides supporters: "There's a ton of screwballs living in this state."

Mostly, he sounds like a 20-year old: "Well, I've got new hours at work now. Starting tomorrow I'm on the morning shift, which means I'll be working from 5:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. That means I'll have to start getting up at 4:00 a.m. every day!!! That's freakin' crazy."

Comments

[SFBrianCL]

Well, it looks like Daniel took down the girlie man post. Too bad, it was pretty offensive on several levels. Oh, and by the way, "liberal" isn't a bad word here. I'd say it's a far better word than conservative. Liberals won both world wars, tackled the Great Depression and brought us the most successful decade in our history (the 90s.) The Conservatives, well, they were isolationists until 20 years ago when they decided they want to be macho and go around showing the world how tough they are. See e.g. Pat Buchanan for the isolationist part, GWB for the macho part.

Oh, and Daniel, you know what you put on the Internet will always be on the Internet. So, here's Daniel's post, available on Google Cache: (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:SxVmtoQVyVQJ:davidray.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_davidray_archive.html+%22Schwarzenegger+is+already+suffering+from+an+unenergized+base%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1)

Well, for all his tough talk about 'Girlie Men,' Arnold Schwarzenegger sure isn't living up to it. It was announced yesterday by the AP that Schwarzenegger would be the keynote speaker on June 29 at a fundriaser in Hollywood, CA for the Log Cabin Republicans, which is a group of gay Republicans.

Now, how much sense does this trip really make? Schwarzenegger is already suffering from an unenergized base that thinks he has moved way too far to the left since last year's special election trouncing, and to be honest, he has. He got blasted last week on the Hugh Hewitt show for selling out to the conservative base. This isn't going to help that problem one bit. In fact, it will only hurt it.

Secondly, Arnold has vetoed a bill that would have legalized 'gay' marriage in the Golden State alredy, and is promising to veto a bill that would include the contributions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons in high school history texts. Both are great moves, and I commend him for them, but what good does it do to continue to woo this segment of the voting population. They're probably not going to vote for him anyway, even if they are republicans. And if they do, it's probably not worht it anyway because of the damage it will do to your base.

Third, I hate Phil Angelides. The guy is awful. He's possibly the most unabashedly liberal candidate I've ever had the experience of knowing a whole lot about, and that includes people like Al Gore and maybe even Howard Dean. So it's obvious that Schwarzenegger would be much better than Angelides, but if you have to become like the other guy to win, what the hell does it even matter???

Stick to your guns, Arnold, or you won't be back.

[calwatch]

Well that's nice, you guys shut down David Ray's website. (And a common name too.) Heh.