Thread: Assembly speaker critiques Schwarzenegger's Washington tour

Now that reconquista racist Fabian Nunez (the Ca. speaker of the house) has used the collaborator Schwartzenegger he's setting himself up for a run at the governors mansion.


Assembly speaker critiques Schwarzenegger's Washington tour By ERICA WERNER03/01/07 13:21:27
California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez said Thursday that if he were governor, he would not have acted the way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did on his trip to Washington this week.
The moderate Republican governor spent two days dispensing advice to Republicans, Democrats and President Bush on how to get along.

"I'm not the governor. But if I were - which I'm not, but if I were - I'd come to Washington with a little bit of a different mission. I'd come here as a supplicant," Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said in an interview with The Associated Press before testifying about global warming at a Senate committee hearing.

"I'd go back home and my lips would probably be swollen from pleading for help because we need Washington more than Washington needs us," Nunez said.

Schwarzenegger was in the nation's capital earlier this week for the National Governors Association conference.

His communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, said the governor did exactly what Nunez said he should have. He lobbied the president, members of Congress and cabinet secretaries on matters of importance to California, such as universal health care, Mendelsohn said.

But Schwarzenegger also used the occasion as a national platform to talk up his political approach while scolding Washington politicians for theirs.

During a Monday speech to the National Press Club, Schwarzenegger accused leaders in Washington of divisiveness and said they should follow the bipartisan example he has set in California.

Schwarzenegger, who often invites legislators to smoke cigars with him outside his Capitol office, even chided the president, telling him to "get yourself a smoking tent."

"I certainly wouldn't come to Washington to tell people here how to do their job," Nunez told the AP. "If California can be an example for the rest of the country, well, that would be great. But I would not want to impose what we're doing in California on anybody. As it is, people think we're arrogant in California."

Nunez also commented skeptically about Schwarzenegger's newfound advocacy for what the governor calls "post-partisan" politics. While in Washington, Schwarzenegger repeated the phrase he coined earlier this year, referring to himself as a governor who accepts ideas from all sides.

"What he's talking about sounds good theoretically. I think in practical terms the way I read it is it's just semantics. Post-partisanship - what does that mean? I don't know. It's some word he made up," Nunez said.

"But I think he has a claim, in some ways, to that new term because last year we got a lot of things done. But you know we did it because we reached across the party aisle ... Remember, everything we got done were Democratic issues."

Mendelsohn defended Schwarzenegger's use of the term.

"Post-partisanship is a simple idea. It means putting the needs of constituents above the needs of a political party," he said. "Speaker Nunez is a perfect example. He compromised on every single major issue last year despite the concerns of the liberal wing of his party and those who didn't want him working with Gov. Schwarzenegger because it was an election year."

Could care less what Nunez says.

Could care less what Nunez says.

Me either but he and Vilagarosa (and others) are very dangerous reconquista determined politicians.