Gov. rejects views of critics on right

SACRAMENTO — After repeatedly being asked about his conservative critics, including talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped his diplomatic veneer Tuesday and declared their views irrelevant to his work in California.

“All irrelevant. Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant. I am not his servant,” the governor said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Limbaugh then declared on his radio program that Schwarzenegger, lacking the communications skills to persuade Californians of his Republican values, had sold them out.

“If he had the leadership skills to articulate conservative principles and win over the public as [former President] Reagan did, then he would have stayed conservative,” said Limbaugh, who is often seen as the embodiment of all conservative viewpoints.

The tiff marked Schwarzenegger’s most high-profile repudiation of a conservative critic. Many fellow Republicans view his support of stem-cell research, mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions and universal healthcare as a betrayal of his party’s ideals.

In the NBC interview, Schwarzenegger said he was “the people’s servant of California. What they call me -- Democrat or Republican or in the center, this and that -- that is not my bottom line. This is for them to talk about.”

Limbaugh said in an interview after his radio show that Schwarzenegger’s recent agreements with Democrats in the Legislature “are not compromises, they are capitulations.”

The governor, he said, may have been “just tired of answering questions about me, and he wanted to say ... ‘I don’t work for Rush Limbaugh, I work for the people of California.’ ”

Almost every time Limbaugh makes a comment about Schwarzenegger, the governor is asked about it. Mostly, he has been diplomatic.

Appearing on “Face the Nation” on Feb. 25, for example, Schwarzenegger was asked about Limbaugh by host Bob Schieffer.

The governor replied, “I always say that you don’t have to give up your principles, all you have to do is just serve the people. And when you have two parties, you have to compromise.”

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor’s comments Tuesday were “not an attack on Rush Limbaugh personally.”

McLear added, “The question was about the criticisms the governor gets from the right, and he thinks it’s irrelevant to what he’s trying to accomplish here in California.”

In recent weeks, Limbaugh has complained that Schwarzenegger’s views on global warming are “no different than what Greenpeace would say.”

And after the governor called a proposed $12-billion levy on hospitals, doctors and healthcare plans a “loan, because it ... goes back to healthcare,” Limbaugh later laughed repeatedly on the air.

He said Schwarzenegger’s rhetorical spin was akin to former President Clinton calling tax increases “investments.”

Schwarzenegger has been a registered Republican since he became a citizen in 1983, and has evolved as a politician since being elected in late 2003.

At first, he offered a populist message punctuated by a conservative tax-cutting mantra. Then came his 2005 special election, considered a conservative shift because it took aim at public employee unions. His newest agenda follows a far more cooperative path with Democrats on such issues as global warming and health care.

Republicans have stayed with him at the voting booth. A Los Angeles Times exit poll on the night he was reelected last November showed support from about 90% of Republican voters.

But Jon Fleischman, a vice chairman of the California Republican Party, said there are “a tremendous number of people who voted for the governor in November who listen to Rush Limbaugh every single day.... Bashing Rush Limbaugh just feeds on a growing concern that the governor sees his conservative base as less relevant to what he wants to achieve.”

Nevertheless, he added, Republicans are generally sticking to Schwarzenegger because “everyone believes tomorrow is going to be the day when he wakes up, pulls back and becomes Arnold the Republican again.”

robert.salladay@latimes.com

*

To read Salladay’s blog, Political Muscle, and other Times Web features, go to latimes.com/calpolitics.