BUFFET MAY GIVE INDIGESTION

Arnie's Money Man (Don Luskin, Wall Street Journal op/ed, 8/15/2003)

Gone are the hopes that Arnold Schwarzenegger would bring his own brand of free-market Austrian economics to California's troubled economy. The would-be tax terminator has chosen as his chief economics adviser a tax perpetuator -- Warren Buffett....

In introducing the 1991 re-release of Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" video series, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, "I come from Austria, a socialistic country . . . I felt I had to come to America, where government isn't always breathing down your neck or standing on your shoes."

I have a theory about centrist Republicans: they are people whose ideas have been formed in conversation with liberals, have heard the liberal caricatures of Republicans, and decided that they actually support some parts of the caricature. Yet they also embrace many liberal positions, for lack of familiarity with any alternative; and because their belief is in a caricature, which liberals constructed to be a straw man, their convictions can easily have the stuffing knocked out. Thus, it is not uncommon to see such people drift left once their beliefs are subjected to criticism. They have more confidence in their lifelong relationships with liberals than in their casual relationship to ideas.

Will the Buffet relationship trump the Friedman idea? I hope not, but Mr. Schwarzenegger will have to decide. Already his liberal friends are trying to push him left:
Schwarzenegger Adviser Buffett Hints Property Tax Is Too Low (Wall Street Journal, 8/15/2003)

Warren Buffett, the billionaire financial adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for California governor, strongly suggested in an interview that the state's property taxes need to be higher....

Mr. Buffett stopped short of saying he would urge Mr. Schwarzenegger to seek a reversal of Proposition 13 to increase property taxes -- a move that would almost certainly be attacked by many of Mr. Schwarzenegger's fellow Republicans. But he left little doubt that that is where he is leaning.

If it's Schwarzenegger's considered position that Proposition 13 has to be repealed, he'll lose all conservative support. Fiscal conservatives could forgive his pro-abortion and pro-gun-control stands, but they won't forgive the pro-tax trifecta.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at August 15, 2003 8:40 AM