Governor's rift with GOP grows wider

After his turnaround on taxes in the budget battle, he won't be attending a state party convention -- and many won't miss him.
By Michael Finnegan
LA Times

February 21, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento — After five years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger came full circle on Friday: The film star who promised to rescue California from its fiscal wreckage without raising taxes signed into law $12.5 billion in tax hikes.

With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California's mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes.

"Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, citing the unpopularity among most California voters of the party's conservative stands on abortion, illegal immigration and other touchstone issues. "It puts them in a very precarious position."

By repudiating the thrust of his candidacy in the 2003 recall -- "I will not raise taxes," Schwarzenegger stated flatly the day after he won -- the governor has also enraged the conservatives who dominate the party.

(More here.)