Rick rips on Arnold...

I guess I never realized Arnold was a parallel for Kay, but I sort of see it now after reading this article from Christy Hoppe (link). Excerpt follows...

AUSTIN – In his quest for re-election, Gov. Rick Perry has launched a two-coast offensive.

Everyone knows his riff on Washington: bad, wasteful, arrogant. For Perry, contempt of Congress isn't a crime; it's common sense.

But punctuating the speeches and interviews is another bad boy: California. The governor dishes disdain and drips derision on the debt-saddled, job-leaking, tax-hiking not-so-Golden State.

It's a state that needs strong, conservative leadership to bring it back from the brink, he told The Wall Street Journal in August, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – a fellow Republican – can't deliver it.

"I think Arnold squandered that chance," Perry said.

In stops around Texas, the governor brags on how he is wooing firms from California and selling the advantages of lawsuit caps, a balanced budget, low regulation and limited taxes.

He recently told a crowd celebrating the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce that he is "proud that El Paso is the first impression that people who are packing up and leaving California have when they come into the state of Texas."

And on Thursday, his office touted an article from a business-oriented Web site that lauded Texas and drop-kicked California, criticizing it not just for a tough business climate but for harboring the Sierra and Cascades. "California has mountains that limit growth," Trends Magazine wrote. "Texas is largely flat.

"California is big. Texas is bigger."

I think Arnold has been a big disappointment because he could have gone into California and shaken things up and created a positive view of Republicans and Republican ideas there... instead he caved to the unions and the liberals on issue after issue and governed more like a Dem.

I think Rick's ripping on Arnold is a subtle way of saying that Kay would govern like Arnold... less conservatively... and lead Texas toward California. I can't believe I never saw that parallel before.