Remember my annoyed claim of how hypocritical Republicans are? Well, how about this one: Ah-nold has been railing against campaign contributions from special interests and how he wants to do away with them. And yet, he’s accepting them. Aha, you say! But wait – it turns out that it depends what the meaning of IS is. He defines special interests as any group that donates money to DEMOCRATS, such as unions and Indian gaming. The corporations that routinely give huge sums to Republican candidates – you know, the ones that want deregulation and favors like that – are not counted under Schwarzenegger’s rules.
Speaking on the “Eric Hogue Show” on radio station KTKZ (1380 AM) in Sacramento, the Republican movie actor drew a distinction between contributions from organized labor and Indian gambling tribes — traditionally Democratic givers he called “real big, powerful special interests” — and corporate donors.
“Any of those kinds of real big, powerful special interests, if you take money from them, you owe them something,” he said.
Any corporate money he takes is irrelevant, Schwarzenegger said, because he wouldn’t be influenced by it.
“There are maybe corporations and companies that maybe the press identifies and says, ‘Well that is a big company, they want certain things,’ ” he said, adding, “I don’t promise anyone anything. There’s no strings attached to anything.”
Larry Noble, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said Schwarzenegger was painting himself into a corner.
“What he’s doing is defining a special interest as ‘somebody who supports my opponent,’ ” Noble said.
