Gov. trying to steer his party back to center

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had heard enough: Republicans vilifying his prized global warming act, denouncing his healthcare plan, belittling his budget. Even comparing him to Gray Davis.

GOP legislators, cheered on by party activists, had been bashing him -- more important, blocking him -- all year long. Now it was down to the final scheduled week of a frustrating legislative session and Republicans still were thwarting his No. 1 priority: universal healthcare.

Time to “speak frankly,” Schwarzenegger told the Republican right Friday night. Time to venture into the hard core of party activism at the Republican state convention and question whether the GOP can avoid being “relegated to the margins of California political life.”

Had the party become “so beaten down. . . that we’ve developed a bunker mentality” -- believing “that our only remaining power is to say ‘No’?” That’s not “healthy,” he warned.

Says Adam Mendelsohn, Schwarzenegger’s communications director: “As the Republican governor and head of his party, he has an obligation to pose these questions.”

Besides, the advisor continued, “how can he credibly, as a Republican governor, fight for healthcare” -- healthcare financed with tax hikes -- “and not go to the party and defend what he’s doing?”

He can’t. Not if he hopes to achieve any semblance of bipartisan support.

First of all, Schwarzenegger told the convention in Indian Wells, he indeed is a Republican -- been one “since Richard Nixon.” He’s not a closet Democrat, despite his wife and in-laws. He’s a proud Republican, the governor insisted, in the mold of conservationist Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, “the pragmatic conservative who reached out and captured the political center.”

But “where is the party today?” he continued. “In movie terms. . . we are dying at the box office. We are not filling the seats.”

“An astonishing” 30 of 32 Republican state Assembly seats have lost GOP voter registration this year, he said. Meanwhile, “declined to state” registration is rising. But the GOP -- unlike the Democrats -- is refusing to allow independents to vote in its party’s presidential primary in February. This makes no sense, Schwarzenegger declared.

“The party you vote for in the primary is usually the party you vote for in the general election.”

Here’s another stat: The California GOP is on a seven-election losing streak in U.S. Senate races.

In fact, Schwarzenegger has been the only Republican winner of a top office in California for the past decade. So, if it’s political power the GOP covets, it might consider hearing him out.

Republicans can win elections, he said, only “by including, not excluding. By being open to new ideas, not rejecting them out of hand. By expanding into the center, not falling back upon ourselves into a smaller and smaller corner.”

Addressing the 1,200 delegates, whose response was mixed, Schwarzenegger quoted Reagan from a speech the then-governor gave 40 years ago to the California Republican Assembly, an activist group. “We cannot become a narrow sectarian party in which all must swear allegiance to prescribed commandments,” Reagan asserted.

“Such a party can be highly disciplined, but it does not win elections. This kind of party soon disappears in a blaze of glorious defeat.”

Schwarzenegger did not quote another key part of that Reagan speech, where the conservative icon promoted a gigantic $1-billion tax increase. Most voters favored the tax hike, Reagan told the Republican activists, “because they see the need to balance the budget.”

Reagan raised taxes, balanced the books and never looked back. Schwarzenegger bowed to the right, refused to hike taxes to make ends meet and is still falling into revenue holes. On taxes, Schwarzenegger has been governing far to the right of Reagan.

But it’s a different GOP breed in the Capitol today. Back then, Republican legislators were dominated by moderates. Today, you can count the moderate GOP lawmakers on one hand. That’s sort of what Schwarzenegger was complaining about. Without centrists -- at least pragmatists -- there can be no compromise, particularly on money issues that require a two-thirds majority vote.

Most Republican voters in California, the governor said, “prefer progress with messy compromise over defeat with pristine principles.”

And most Republicans also prefer his proposals, he asserted.

The governor came armed with polls from the Public Policy Institute of California: Nearly two-thirds of GOP voters favor the global warming bill that he and Democratic lawmakers teamed up to pass last year. A majority of Republicans support his healthcare proposal, and two-thirds of all voters do.

Also: 75% of Republican voters approve of Schwarzenegger’s job performance. Only 30% like the Legislature’s.

“We should be listening to the majority of our party,” he said.

It was Schwarzenegger’s most important state party speech since he introduced himself to the GOP at a convention during the 2003 recall campaign. In that address, however, the candidate stressed his conservative values. Both speeches were written by Landon Parvin, a former Reagan wordsmith.

Last weekend, the governor easily could have snubbed these hard-right activists. Instead, he chose to climb onto a soapbox with his powerful voice and try to coax some toward the center. It was long overdue.

He may not have swayed many of the convention crowd. And it’s probably too late to move any headstrong legislators this year. But he’ll have three more years after this.

Besides, his message just might reach a budding generation of potential political activists and leaders looking for an inclusive party with new ideas and a hospitable center.

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george.skelton@latimes.com