Ok, I admit it, I'm falling for Schwarzenegger.   It's a little weird and I feel like I need to be a little "intellectually on-gaurd" to defend myself against the inevitable style vs. substance attack.

So here's my logic chain.    Let's start with a bottom's up analysis.   From this perspective, my goal is to choose the least "evil" in the pack.   The only 3 choices we have who've got a shot in hell of winning are Davis, Bustamante, and Schwarz.  Voting for anyone else is tantamount to a vote for either Davis or Bustamante.  (Sorry McClintock - more on this in a sec)

Davis is a closet socialist who's state governance failures are well known and documented and who runs on a blatant "here's what I'm going to extort from business & the wealthy for you" platform.   Davis' opportunistic interest group pandering is disgusting and is the epitomy of what turns so many voters off from politics.   The tax structure he presides over is second in kookiness only to the IRS:

Over the period 1991-2001, the average annual growth in California tax payments was more than double the average annual growth in income.

Bustamante is just about the only guy who's possibly worse - he's not just a closet socialist but also a populist demagogue and potentially racist.    Bustamante's anti-business orientation actually manages to be worse than Davis'.   He *honestly* believes that the solution to California's deteriorating job engine (particularly in the massive low- and mid-skilled sectors) is to turn illegal aliens into software and biotech professionals via - SURPRISE! - taxpayer funded adult education initiatives.   He can't wait to make illegal aliens state citizens cuz he knows its the only way to secure an interest group whom he can pander 100% to.   The choice between Davis and Bustamante, IMHO, is just a choice between a slow train wreck and a faster one.

McClintock.    Poor McClintock.   To tell the truth, he's the most serious candidate with the platform I probably most consistently agree with.   He's articulate, well reasoned, seasoned, and a serious methodical player.   But he just lacks the charisma - a nontrivial attribute in populist California.  It's the charisma that gets you that last 5% when dealing with our recalcitrant state legislature.   He'd be a GREAT #2 - a COO but I simply don't see him as CEO material.   Which sucks - he's a good man and this is unfair.   But so is life.

From a top-down, issues standpoint, there are a lot of things I'm finding more and more attractive about Schwarz:

• Pro-business - aside from high profile acting gigs, Schwarz is also a businessman and has massive sympathies with producers of all stripes.   At least as far as the rhetoric goes, he and McClintock are head and shoulders above the rest and this is my #1 voting issue.   Hands down.   He calls himself a Friedman free-marketer and has surrounded himself with supply siders - his recent WSJ editorial being a prime example.  Economic rights are deeper, more pervasive, and more personal than most other rights (what could possibly have a bigger impact on your day-to-day life than your choice of job and how you spend your paycheck?). 

  Schwarz understands this - Bustamante and Davis don't.    Schwarz has signed paychecks;  Bustamante and Davis have done nothing but extort from business.

• Illegal Aliens - as GNXP notes, he's specifically come down on the creeping "rights but not responsibilities of citizenship" being given to illegals by pandering politicians like Davis & Bustamante
• Pro-Choice / Pro-Gay - he's pro- but doesn't let this issue define his candidacy.  In California, these stances are critical
• Pro-Guns but with some regulation

All of which conspire to give him that most elusive of qualities - electability.    In a perfect world, McClintock would be our governor. But I'm getting pretty damn tired of SF / California political shenanigans and am willing to compromise on specifics a bit to get a general attitude I can agree with.   There's poli sci class and then there's real life.   I know which one I spend more time in.

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UPDATE: FANTASTIC REASONS why I'm happy Schwarz is gov:

I remember picking up a small, poorly bound book that was a collection of papers presented at a very academic, very technical symposium held in the early 1980's on the Austrian school of economics. That's not actually a school, but a group of thinkers who ushered in a new free market view of economics. On the first page was a small list of attendees at the conference, and there was Arnold Schwarzenegger's name.

[arnold speaking]...Okay, so there I was, waiting for Maria to get ready for a game of mixed doubles tennis. I started flipping the television dial. I caught a glimpse of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman whom I recognized from my studies in economics. I didn't know I was watching Free to Choose. It knocked me out. Dr. Friedman validated everything I ever thought about the way the economy works.

Read the WHOLE entry.

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