RNC @ MSG: The Governator

Ah, Ah-nuld. Ah-nuld is the GOP’s secret weapon. Ah-nuld blows away the rest of Hollywood combined. Ah-nuld has everything – the aura of youth at age 57, virility, charisma, charm, success, a fabulous background story that was the core and strength of his address, and the fact that he is a winner, so much so that he lends the entire party that same image. The Democrats have no answer for him, and even if they did, their, well, “girly-man”-ism would diminish him down to like the Bane character at the end of Batman and Robin.

Such is the Governator’s unique status and prestige that he can – and did Tuesday night – say things that literally nobody else, much less a Republican, could utter and not get publicly lynched.

I’ll try not to reprint the entire speech, but it was just so damned good from beginning to end that it’ll be hard not to.

Thank you very much. Thank you. What a greeting. What a greeting. Wow. This is like winning an Oscar - as if I would know.

Funny!

Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies. And that's what the Democrats should have called their convention.

If any ambulatory Republican didn’t shoot up and pump his fist in the air at that line, s/he must have been deaf.

You know, on the way up here to the podium, a gentleman came up to me and said, ‘Governor, you are as good a politician as you were an actor.’ What a cheap shot. Cannot believe it.

ROFL!

Ah-nuld proceeded into his biography, and, remarkable a story as it is, you could tell by the way he recounted it that every word was coming straight from his heart, his enthusiasm and gratitude far too genuine for an actor of his comparatively limited range to possibly manufacture.

Here was a particularly gripping portion:

When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw Communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector.

Growing up, we were told, ‘Don't look the soldiers in the eye. Just look straight ahead.’ It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him back to the Soviet Union as slave labor.

Now, my family didn't have a car. But one day we were in my uncle's car. It was near dark as we came to the Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy. I was not an action hero back then.

But I remember. I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I would never see them again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot. Today, the world no longer fears the Soviet Union, and it is because of the United States of America.

How’s that for a little perspective? We who are born here and do not know what it is like to live under actual tyranny simply cannot understand what this must have been like. But, unlike the idiotic extreme left and their poisonous “Bush is Hitler” fantasies, Arnold does. He lived it. And it’s part of why he’s so obviously grateful to be an American.

Now get a load of this:

I finally arrived here in 1968. What a special day it was. I remember I arrived here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire.

The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left.

A Republican calling a Democrat socialist??? Wow. And that was thirty-six years ago. Guess that must make the balance of them communists by now, on Arnie’s scale.

But then I heard Nixon speak. Then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military.

Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.

I said to my friend, I said, ‘What party is he?’

My friend said, ‘He's a Republican.’

I said, ‘Then I am a Republican.’

A Republican invoking Richard Nixon as a positive role model????? Only Arnold Schwarzenegger could get away with this. Maybe not even him, which would help explain why he’s not seeking a term of his own in 2006.

Then came his “big tent” appeal, which, unlike the usual attacks on the social right that this sort of thing usually degenerates into, really fit the description and came across as so unifying as to disarm Big Media’s quadrennial attempts to portray the contrary:

Now, many of you out there tonight are Republican like me in your hearts and in your beliefs. Maybe you're from Guatemala. Maybe you're from the Philippines. Maybe you're from Europe or the Ivory Coast. Maybe you live in Ohio, Pennsylvania or New Mexico.

And maybe - just maybe - you don't agree with this party on every single issue. I say to you tonight that I believe that's not only OK, but that's what's great about this country.

Here we can respectfully disagree and still be patriotic, still be American and still be good Republicans.

It is, as many Republicans have found out, unavoidable in a governing, majority party.

And the unifying points came shooting out, one right after the other, like the ammo from that minigun he used in Terminator II:

“My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans, how do you know if you are a Republican? Well, I tell you how. If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican.

If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican.

If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican.

If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children, then you are a Republican.

If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican.

And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe that we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican.

At this point, if John Kerry wasn’t out on the waves falling off of his windsurf board, even he might have had a passing doubt or two (yes, yes, “the ultimate flip-flop”…)

Now, there's another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people and faith in the U.S. economy. And to those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie-men.

Another word would be “metrosexual,” I think.

I think I’ve got the word for which I was searching up above. Ah-nuld is cool. Tuesday night he made it cool to be a Republican. And he even made George W. Bush cool.

As the Governator concluded, I was reminded of the scene in Independence Day when Wil Smith and Jeff Goldblum are about to shoot the nuclear missile at the alien mother-ship, and they’re standing there with their cigars, ridiculing the big bulbous-headed critters that are about to be immolated. Just like them, the Democrats don’t know what’s been hitting them, what is hitting them, and what’s still to come at them.

I think if they just took Michael Moore and set him adrift somewhere in the Barents Sea or something, like a big, toothless basking shark, I could almost feel sorry for them.

Almost, that is.