Dan Schnur Quotations

Political freaks like me have heard every one of the lines before, from both sides. Normal people haven't. The best thing that could have come from a forum like this is simply having a larger audience for his message.

If the situation in Iraq has not improved, and if the hurricane causes an economic downturn, then Republican candidates have something to worry about.

Fundraising can make normally sane people pretty crazy. They both have political goals for which they are raising money, and they are drawing from the same base.

He has bet his governorship on these initiatives. He has pushed all of his chips to the middle of the table, and if these initiatives don't pass, it is difficult to see him seeking another term.

His target audience are the people who voted for him in the recall election, but who drifted away. My guess is that those people are willing to put the special election behind them if they see him talking about issues that are more important to them.

There aren't a lot of votes to be gained by overseeing a disaster relief that is handled the way it should be, but there is a political downside to not doing enough, or not doing it fast enough.

Last year he was drawing lines in the sand; this year he is looking for common ground. He needs to win back the support of Californians who voted for him in the recall election in 2003 but voted against his initiatives in the special election.

That would be just what Davis needs. There is nothing Gray Davis would like more than to be able to talk about the recall as a nefarious plot by out-of-state Republicans.

The Democrats are in exactly the same position as the Sunnis in Iraq. From the very beginning, they have done everything they can to disparage the process. Now they have to turn around and convince their supporters to participate. That is a pretty quick pivot.

Both sides believe that their supporters are more motivated. It's impossible to guess who is right, but we'll know on election day.

Together, they are greater than the sum of their individual political parts. Schwarzenegger may not have picked a running mate like he would have in a presidential campaign, but McClintock provides him the same balance that a running mate would.

Schwarzenegger's critics last year argued that voters didn't care about what he was trying to fix. You can't say that this year.

This isn't what term limits were supposed to do. While they've brought new faces and a diversity of backgrounds to the Legislature, it's taking awhile for the new faces to seep upwards because the old faces don't want to leave.

This is very much in keeping with Cheney's persona, but it is also a natural byproduct of what you will find with a politician who has already run his last campaign.

It's politics as usual. He can blame Sacramento -- I don't think that's his first or his best option but it's a fallback.

It's very hard to see why he'd want to spend another four years working under the same set of restrictions. Legislators in safe districts and a budget process that doesn't work -- that doesn't seem like a fun way to spend four more years of his life.

Arnold is not moving substantively very far at all, but he is dramatically changing his emphasis. Almost every policy proposal that's come out of the Governor's Office over the last week or two is not significantly different from things he's talked about in the past. But he's making a much greater effort to emphasize a more moderate and conciliatory approach.

In the days before term limits, politicians who knew they weren't ever going to be governor were content to stay in the Legislature. They knew that being a Senate committee chair was a better job than being lieutenant governor.

By nature, Kennedy and Schmidt are both the type of people who administer with a very strong hand. But the most important thing is for Schwarzenegger himself to vest them with that authority.

For the last several years politicians of both parties have learned the best way to handle a problem like this is to bare their souls. Cheney is a throwback to another era.

The desperation to which the state's constitutional officers are willing to go to avoid getting a real job is extraordinary.