Recall Madness

This is your brain. This is your brain on recall. Any Questions?

Well it's been a little while since we checked in with what people are saying about the recall, so lets' do that.

Yet Monday, after donating a breathtaking $1.6 million to the recall effort, Issa announced that if two Republicans -- Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Sen. Tom McClintock -- remain on the replacement ballot, and if it looks as if Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante will win the race, Californians should vote "no" on the recall.

There goes the pretense, uttered more in faux sorrow than anger by recall-istas, that their civic-minded goal was to replace Davis with someone better, and it didn't matter from which party.
Debra Saunders

"The recall, in my opinion, undermines the accountability of voters, telling them in effect that they can have a do-over whenever they mess things up by electing the wrong guy. Well, I'm sorry. As I've said before, the people of California elected Gray Davis and now they must be punished.

That may sound like a joke, but it's actually a central tenet of democracy. Politicians and parties must be held accountable for their past mistakes if they are going to be relied upon to fulfill their promises in the future. Recalling Gray Davis might teach him a lesson, but so what? Gray Davis is destined to be working at a Fotomat anyway."
Jonah Goldberg

"I took a lot of calls on McClintock and Arnold, and people for the most part feel that supporting him [McClintock] is "throwing their vote away," or that they won't vote for him until he closes the gap some. Even e-mailers who think McClintock won the debate say, "But that didn't move his poll numbers, so it didn't move me." I'm not trying to push any candidate here, and I understand the talk of incrementalism. I just don't understand why so many people think McClintock is great yet won't vote for him. And don't give me this business that California isn't a conservative state. Reagan won there, as did George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson - who didn't exactly have star power"
Rush Limbaugh

"So you can’t say there wasn’t serious debate; you just had to ignore the celebs if you wanted to hear it. The Sacramento Bee notes the upshot was that the debate did for Gray Davis what he has trouble doing for himself: made him look like a competent governor. After all, if Schwarzenegger is going to stage an evening of zingers and close with the rallying cry, “I need a lot of help,” maybe we should ask Davis to stick around."
Eric Alterman

I don't know how this happened, but I just don't care anymore. This story used to be so much fun, but now, it's just a death spiral until they reelect Colonel Dumpy again (by failing to recall him).