I was talking with a friend of mine — a very educated, articulate conservative — a couple of weeks ago about Governor Schwarzenegger‘s re-election. The topic: why should we care if the Governor returns for another four years?

Now, this is an odd conversation for two politically active conservatives to have. I want to care. I want to want to support the Governor‘s re-election.

It‘s more than the standard divide between conservative and moderate Republicans. Governor Pete Wilson always managed to bridge that divide somehow, even in the wake of Ron Unz‘s 1994 primary challenge. Wilson‘s people could ultimately boil it down to, "Hey, we know conservative don‘t like that the Governor‘s pro-choice and he signed a huge tax increase, but he‘s consistently tough on the public employee unions, he appoints conservatives and Republicans to the bench, he‘s pro-business and he doesn‘t kow-tow to the environmentalists."

In other words, there was enough of the Wilson agenda and governing style for conservatives to like, that they could generally be kept on board.

I was going through this litany with my friend, and we realized that Schwarzenegger couldn‘t even make that Wilson case. Governor Schwarzenegger was tough on the public employee unions — until they beat him in the special election, and now he‘s walked away from any effort to rein them in. He‘s abandoned reforming public employee pensions and restructuring state government. He appoints loads of Democrats to the bench. He professes to be pro-business while supporting anti-growth laws like the minimum wage hike, and is unable to stand up to the environmental lobby — witness his tossing the "I Say Build It!" slogan out to the window when it comes to building the 241 tollway.

How would things be any different if Steve Westly were Governor? Granted, Governor Schwarzenegger has resisted pressured to increase taxes, and now that state government revenues are on the rebound that pressure has eased. But Steve Westly also opposes raising taxes in order to fix the structural deficit.

Don‘t get me wrong — I‘m not calling for Steve Westly‘s election. I‘m trying to make a point that Governor Schwarzenegger has a serious political problem on his hands if Steve Westly wins the Democratic nomination: a dispirited conservative base that wants more than a dime‘s worth of difference between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Westly if it is to bestir itself on the Governor‘s behalf.

To be fair, this situation isn‘t entirely Governor Schwarzenegger‘s fault. The demoralization of the base has much to do with an insular, spendthrift, pork-barreling GOP Congress cut adrift from its philosophical moorings, and a GOP President who refuses to act as a brake on the GOP Congress‘s profligacy.

But since abandoning his courageous and inspiring (albeit ill-executed) campaign to break public employee union dominance of state government, Gov. Schwarzenegger has become just another big Republican disappointment.

Now, if Phil Angelides is the Democratic nominee, that problem largely takes care of itself. Angelides takes the soak-the-rich, class warrior act to a level that scares the bejeezus out of Republicans.
He‘s like Walter Mondale without the charm and charisma. If Angelides is the Democratic nominee, it isn‘t hard to see how things would get worse.

But I think Steve Westly will win the June primary, and the Governor is going to have a much tougher job convincing skeptical GOP activists to work hard for his re-election. What is the Governor going to do in a second term that we should care about? Or that Steve Westly won’t do? Arnold appoints Democrat judges, and so will Steve Westly. Arnold isn‘t going to pick fights with the public employee unions, and neither will Steve Westly. Arnold doesn‘t want to raise taxes but won‘t rule it out — and ditto for Steve Westly. Arnold isn‘t serious about reducing government spending, and neither is Steve Westly. Arnold won‘t stand up to the environmentalist lobby, and neither will Steve Westly. Arnold appointed a teacher‘s union hack to the State Board of Education — and Steve Westly probably would, too. Arnold supported the minimum wage hike, and so did Steve Westly.

The week before last, my wife and I were invited to the Lincoln Club of Orange County‘s annual dinner. I don‘t want to re-hash Jon‘s fine coverage of the event, but it did provide a startling portrait of the philosophical hollowing of California Republicanism.

Now, the Governor is an incredibly charismatic man. His presence in a room makes you want to be excited about his Governorship. And his speech to the Lincoln Club was fine by conventional standards — although the "green" section of the speech fell flat. You don‘t fire up a Republican crowd with visions of a million solar roofs. I leaned over to GOP Scott Baugh and remarked that the Governor‘s staff forgot to pull the Sierra Club speech note cards.

But the Governor‘s speech was short on soul. The paeans to opportunity and his immigrant success story still resonate with me. But this was the Lincoln Club of Orange County he was addressing — a group dedicated to fighting — fighting! — for conservative principles. This is a group that believes in being in — and staying in — the arena through victory and defeat.

It fell to Sen. Tom McClintock to stir the assembled GOP faithful with an appeal to our hearts and minds — by talking about the choice that is ever before in this republican system: between freedom and control, between fiscal restraint and recklessness, between government that serves taxpayers or masters them. A speech like that is a tonic for a Republican, a reminder of "why we fight." As a friend of mine at the dinner remarked, it was the kind of speech we used to hear from Republican politicians, and now rarely do — the kind of speeches that inspired us to engage politics.

Governor Schwarzenegger is charismatic, magnetic and cool. But as he looks ahead at the fall campaign against likely opponent Steve Westly, what I‘d like is for him to be inspiring. I‘d like to hear him give a speech like the one Tom McClintock gave, so that afterwards I‘d want to follow him in to political battle — instead of just wanting his autograph.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.