McClintock Can’t Top Rival’s Glamour

On Saturday night, I should have been popping Junior Mints at the multiplex, not trudging around at the state Republican convention at the swingin’ Marriott Hotel, but there’s the breaks of the recall for you.

Still, I must have been stuck in a movie-think rut, because as I sat there in the press corral, scribbling notes during Tom McClintock’s passionate homily on why he should be the GOP choice for governor, he reminded me of somebody ... a stock character of cinema -- Tom McClintock as the First Wife, the one who gets dumped for the Trophy Wife.

He’s not the Betty Broderick, guns-blazing, if-I-can’t-have-you-nobody-can kind of First Wife. Not yet, anyway.

McClintock’s more your hurt, bewildered, sinned-against model of First Wife, abruptly dumped for a fresher model, utterly blindsided by the news and protesting all the way to divorce court:

But I’m the real, true-blue conservative in your life.

I’m the one who’s voted against every tax ever proposed.

I was against the car tax before anyone else had ever heard of it.

I’m the one who’s on the right side on abortion and homosexuals and gun control.

You’re ready to dump me for that ... that muscle-bound fly-by-night? The one who hasn’t even lifted a finger to vote in six of the last eight state elections?

I’ve been right here for you, without fail, for 20 years -- and this is the thanks I get?

Is that a rhetorical question? And oh, Tom -- don’t slam the door on your way out.

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The trophy wife phenomenon usually happens when the husband has made it big and wants to shed the trappings of his old, struggling self, lock, stock and spouse.

Except California’s GOP hasn’t made it big. Not quite 11 months ago, it lost every statewide election and both houses of the Legislature to the Democrats. The only Republican who came close to winning statewide was McClintock.

So California’s Republicans, desperately deep in midlife-crisis mode, are eyeing a flashier model equipped with the three Ms -- money, muscles and ... moderation.

Like any marital rift, this one has split the family like a Thanksgiving wishbone.

On Saturday night, a young McClintock supporter, a conservative up-and-comer in the party, promised me that he would walk out on the party if his fellow Republicans are so star-struck/moonstruck/dumbstruck as to betray McClintock and the party and elect Schwarzenegger.

Another handed me a witty, vicious composite photo captioned “The origin of Arnold’s conservative platforms,” showing a schoolroom setup, with Schwarzenegger peeking over McClintock’s shoulder to crib his answers.

As waiters dodged around us carrying platters of meat, Celeste Greig, who spent several years on the GOP’s board of directors, was unsparing about Schwarzenegger as a Johann-come-lately: “I guess because he’s got the name ID he can bring in the masses. I believe in paying your dues. If someone should get out [of the race], it should be him. If you want to climb the ladder, you have to start at the bottom.”

The bottom is exactly where McClintock began, as a 4-year-old kid hauled to a rally to hear Ike speak kindly of his vice president, a Californian named Richard Nixon. McClintock’s politics are writ large and lasting on stone tablets; no wonder some of his fellow partyers call him a caveman. He once said that, when it came to fiscal programs, his Persian cat would make a better candidate than Pete Wilson. He is not one to pour oil on troubled waters unless he intends to put a match to it.

The old-line California GOP has loved the likes of McClintock. Voting for them, primary after primary, felt good, even knowing the candidate would combust in the flames of righteous right-of-center martyrdom when the general election came around.

But with George W. Bush in the White House, Arnold Schwarzenegger on the hustings and Gray Davis on the ropes, even some of the hard-liners are softening; the finish-line tape, the blue ribbon, the gold medal -- they look so close, so delectable, that compromise looks more palatable than another defeat.

My colleague Jean Pasco, who also didn’t get to spend Saturday at the movies, talked with Jon Fleischman, once the head of the conservative California Republican Assembly. He has composed for himself a “mental primary election”: First, vote with your heart, regardless of the candidate’s chances. Then, decide who can also win, and that’s who gets the vote in the “general” election. Fleischman’s “mental primary” winner is McClintock. His vote in the general: Schwarzenegger.

There are lots of surprising names on Schwarzenegger’s endorsement list. One of them is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Assn., McClintock’s spiritual family, which has praised its son as an “outstanding champion” and “unwavering ally” of its cause -- but is backing Schwarzenegger.

And there’s the Rev. Pat Robertson, fire-and-brimstone broadcaster Pat. This one floored me, especially inasmuch as I spent a bit of time with Robertson when he ran for president. Imagine: If a Democratic candidate were any one of these things that Schwarzenegger is -- pro-abortion rights, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, the utterer of raunchy remarks in a men’s magazine -- Robertson would be steaming up the camera lens with righteous wrath.

But when, on a cable show, Robertson was asked whether a Christian could, in good conscience, vote for Schwarzenegger, he mentioned that he was into some “pretty heavy weightlifting” himself and “the weightlifters of the world need to unite,” ha ha, but seriously folks, California “could use a big bruiser to knock some heads together” and “I think we don’t have anybody else that’s coming up on the radar.”

McClintock, the man who’s been on the radar screen for 20 years, suggested acidly, on a different cable news show, that Robertson and his flock “take a closer look at the positions that Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken on a wide ranger of social issues. I think they’ll be appalled.”

The social issues -- abortion, gun control, gay rights -- the dirt swept under the carpet, the unmentionable topics of the campaign, which is saying a lot in an election that’s had to discuss group sex. The social issues the national GOP used to divide and conquer are the same ones that have derailed them in California, which is why everyone’s keeping his mouth shut about them this time, lest it run the GOP off the rails again.

The Schwarzenegger faction desperately wants McClintock to bail out before he becomes a Naderesque spoiler. But none of them wants his fingerprints to be found on McClintock’s back. So all they can do is hope that someone, in political-Becket fashion, will rid them of this turbulent candidate -- because McClintock is not the type to oblige them and step aside.

And if you’re the betting sort, you can go to an Indian casino and put money on it.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com