Terminator vs. Patriot? Get ready to rumble

I WON’T SAY the Republicans in California are panicking or anything, but there’s already a “Mel Gibson for Governor” website.

Can it be? Arnold Schwarzenegger an underdog? The governor gets his knuckles whacked in the special election a month ago and the right flank of his own party is already counting to 10 over him.

What, “stay the course” only works for Iraq, not California? Ronald Reagan also lost his special election when he was governor, and he didn’t exactly close up shop. And does anyone believe that the man who rebounded from “Jingle All the Way” is a quitter?

Yet on the spanking-new www.melgibsonforgovernor.com website, you can read the warning in letters of e-fire:

“Rumors abound that, following the horrendous defeat of his Special Election ballot measures, Governor Schwarzenegger may not run for re-election.”

And, it warns, “with the possibility that a high-profile democrat like Warren Beatty or Rob Reiner will enter the race, it is imperative that Republicans find a strong, appealing candidate who can win on Election Day. We believe that person is Mel Gibson.”

Note the deliberate small-d democrat and big-R Republican. I’m surprised they capitalized Beatty and Reiner. (Reiner said Wednesday that he had thought about running but won’t -- his kids, who go to school with Schwarzenegger’s kids and so must be wised up to this, begged him not to.)

What really “abounds” is more likely Republican choler that Schwarzenegger is trying to make up with the ticked-off middle-of-the-road voters who elected him governor in the first place, and that he just named a Democrat as his new chief of staff to help him do it.

It’s hard enough for the poor Republicans to put up with a governor married to a tough-minded Democratic woman, but did he have to hire another one of them -- and a lesbian to boot -- as his “day wife?”

I want ‘em both to run. I want a bruising Schwarzenegger versus Gibson primary. Even though I’m sick of Schwarzenegger’s script-twist speechifyings, how could I -- how could anyone -- resist the gladiatorial pas de deux of The Terminator versus The Patriot?

* Schwarzenegger wows Latino voters with his “Hasta la vista”; Gibson goes pre-Columbian -- some lines in his new movie “Apocalypto” are in Mayan.

* No one chooses his father, but Schwarzenegger’s was a Nazi brownshirt, a storm trooper. Gibson’s is a renegade Catholic, part of a fringe splinter ideology that doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened and that no pope has been legally chosen in the last 40 years. And Gibson’s hugely successful “The Passion of the Christ” dipped into the old-time-religion poisoned well for its “Jews killed Christ” theology.

* Schwarzenegger defanged Dad’s ghost by giving money and time to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He visited Wiesenthal himself. Gibson’s company has just signed with ABC to develop a Holocaust miniseries based on a survivor’s memoir.

* Schwarzenegger supported Proposition 71, the stem cell research measure. Gibson opposed it. Each man says the other promised to call back to talk about it, but never did. (Neither the L.A. County Registrar of Voters nor The Times’ research team could find a record of Gibson being registered to vote in that election; was he just talking the talk?)

* When it comes to the death penalty, Schwarzenegger seems to be OK with lethal injection; I wonder whether Gibson would try to bring back the rack.

* Schwarzenegger has seven Mr. Olympia trophies. Gibson has two Oscars. Both are statues of naked guys, but Schwarzenegger’s are anatomically correct, and how.

* Schwarzenegger still owns Hummers, as far as I know; I saw “Road Warrior” -- Gibson knows how to survive a gas crisis.

No question that Gibson is a true believer, but in democracy? The guy who humiliated King Edward I in “Braveheart” and King George III in “The Patriot” is going to give the time of day to the California Legislature?

I’ve seen no reaction from Gibson about this potential political draft. But remember, he did play Hamlet. Maybe he just can’t decide.

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PATT MORRISON‘s e-mail is patt.morrison@latimes.com.