http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinion/arti ... 89181.html

Today is Thursday, August 17, 2006
Originally published Thursday, August 17, 2006
Updated Thursday, August 17, 2006
Governor walking fine line with Republicans, independents
If he gives core Republicans what they want he'll alienate the moderates who could give him his re-election.
By Tom Elias

Despite months of completely positive news coverage, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still has not been able to move his overall job approval ratings in major polls anywhere near the 50 percent mark, let alone achieving the sky-high approval levels he enjoyed before pushing last year's futile special election.

This leaves him with one vital need as he gets set to begin his fall re-election campaign in earnest: Schwarzenegger probably cannot win this fall without near-unanimous support from his party's conservative base. In fact, he can't win if any significant number of those voters stay home.

But he also can't win unless he attracts a majority of the moderate, independent voters who in ever-increasing numbers lately have been registering to vote without declaring a party preference. Play to one of these audiences and you may lose the other.

Most of the governor's moves this year have been aimed squarely at the independent voters, who made up 18 percent of the electorate in the June primary.

When Schwarzenegger switches positions on issues like border fences and use of National Guard troops to stop illegal immigration, it is at least in part to appease the decline-to-staters. When he restores funding he had previously denied to public schools, it is partly intended to defang opposition from the California Teachers Association, but also aims at pleasing the independents. When the governor backs almost $40 billion in state construction and repair bonds, he aims to appease labor unions, moderate Democrats and independents who resisted his ballot initiatives of last year.

But all these things aggravate the GOP base. When Schwarzenegger first opposes a border fence as useless and also opposes the National Guard aiding the Border Patrol, then does an about-face and supports both tactics, he makes Republican voters wonder what he really believes.

Conservative Steve Frank, a former leader of the activist California Republican Assembly, lists on his Web log several ways Schwarzenegger could convince Republicans he is serious about controlling illegal immigration. He said the governor should force employers of illegals to deduct income taxes from their pay, make those same employers pay into the state's workers compensation fund, enforce worker safety rules on employers of illegals, order the Highway Patrol to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers including the undocumented, and enforce state laws that prohibit banks from issuing loans to customers who plan to use the money to break or defy other laws.

But so far, Schwarzenegger is not becoming an anti-illegal immigrant activist. To do so would displease many big businesses that employ droves of illegals and also appear on the list of the governor's major campaign contributors.

At the same time, some active Republicans are offended by Schwarzenegger's unquestioning support of the multibillion-dollar bond measures on the fall ballot that are designed by legislative Democrats.

Frank claims that illegal immigrants will enjoy most of the benefits from added school construction, affordable housing, farmworker housing and school rehabilitation.

Frank is correct that there is no Republican agenda in any of this. By contrast, there was a strong GOP agenda in the initiatives Schwarzenegger backed last year, and they failed badly. Who knew that Schwarzenegger would virtually abandon his party's usual positions as a result?

But he won't win re-election unless he convinces core Republicans that he's preferable to Democratic challenger Phil Angelides, and that a vote for Arnold won't produce a Democratic agenda.

On the other hand, if he switches to heavily Republican rhetoric, he figures to alienate the moderate Democrats and independent voters who went strongly against his measures last year. All which explains why Schwarzenegger's re-election hopes remain somewhat uncertain.

Tom Elias is author of The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It, now available in an updated third edition. His e-mail address is tdelias@aol.com.