Today's hearing will either be strike two in the kickoff to the Christmas riots, or strike three in the governor's bid for reelection. Those are the political realities in a nutshell.
My fear is the governor, in an effort to win friends on the left, will fall for all the Tookie hype and will grant clemency. Republicans often mistakenly believe that if they just do what the left wants, the left will support them. It doesn't happen that way - just ask George H.W. Bush.
The first president Bush signed a huge tax increase as a concession to the Dems and after a lot of promises of support. The ink hadn't even dried on the bill before the Dems were in front of the cameras slamming Bush for raising taxes. You can't win by pandering to the left.
Should the governor grant clemency, he will not gain even one vote from the left, but will certainly lose millions of votes from the right. He won't have a prayer of reelection.
What will the governor do? Stay tuned, and don't make any plans in Los Angeles next week if he turns Tookie down.
UPDATE: For those of you who have heard the many good deeds of Tookie extolled by his cohorts and friendly media types, I'll bet the thing you've seen the most is the line of children's books that Tookie "wrote". Here are some facts about those books that I'll bet you haven't seen in any of the media reports (from Stanley Crouch):
Still, Williams is being held up as an example of redemption because he has supposedly turned his life around. He has written children's books that speak out against gang violence. But the actor and writer Joseph Phillips discovered that the highest selling children's book written by Williams has sold only 330 copies. Not exactly a universal audience.But if even one gangbanger has gone straight......
UPDATE: Tookie gets no love from the Guv.
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