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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Kevin Drum goes after Arnold:

Is Arnold the most brazen liar in the history of politics, or what? I say this without a lot of malice, since I genuinely sympathize with the almost impossible job he's taken on. But still, enough's enough.

As the LA Times reports today, Arnold was on CNN yesterday and suggested that he might suspend Proposition 98, an initiative that guarantees a certain minimum level of school funding. To anyone who wasn't in California during the campaign it's hard to get across the depth of the deceit this demonstrates. Here was his TV ad on the subject of education:

• Question: Will you have to cut education?
  
  Schwarzenegger: No. We can fix this mess without hurting the schools. For me, children come first. Always have, always will.

I'm telling you, this ad ran a dozen times a night on every station in the state. He said over and over that education wouldn't be touched and that he supported Proposition 98. It was a cornerstone of his campaign. But less than a month after being sworn in he casually proposes gutting Prop 98 and then sends out his chief flack to make weasel noises about what the meaning of "cut" is. It's really unbelievable.

In the same interview, Arnold also backed off his promise to make sure local communities get back the money they lost when he reduced the vehicle license fee. And he's backed off his promise to investigate the groping charges.

This is a joke. He knew perfectly well exactly how bad the state's finances were when he made these promises, and he made them anyway. He knew he couldn't keep these promises without tax increases, and he made them anyway. And everyone believed that he had some magic plan that defied the laws of economics and lined up to vote for him.

And now he's just tossing those promises overboard without so much as an apology. It's revolting.


I haven't been paying close attention, and hope Drum is overreacting.

edited to try to solve the attribution problem