WHEN President Bush came to Los Angeles earlier this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger treated him like a rival Mafia boss crossing a turf line. Schwarzenegger didn't want Bush raising money from the same right-wing Beverly Hills donors who the governor wanted to help underwrite his November ballot measure campaigns.
"We would have appreciated if he would have done his fundraising after the Nov. 8 election, because you know we need now all the money in the world," said Schwarzenegger, who ran for office saying that he was so rich he didn't need anyone else's money.
By turning to those donors, Schwarzenegger has revealed a truth about his proposals. He presented them as nonpartisan, but they are unquestionably rooted in a gene pool of conservatism.
Some of the nation's leading conservative thinkers and strategists are seeking, through Schwarzenegger's initiatives, to alter the balance of power between the right and left wings of California politics. Their hope is to turn California red in '08 and pioneer a new gospel that can spread across the country.
The grandest Republican architect is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, host of weekly gatherings of Republicans in Washington and, according to the Aug. 1 New Yorker, the current ringleader of the "Republican revolution."
"He refers to Democrats as 'the enemy'; he has described bipartisanship as 'date rape'; and he likes to talk about reducing the federal government so much that he could 'drown it in the bathtub,' " the article says.
Norquist is behind Proposition 75, the Schwarzenegger initiative that polls show is most likely to succeed.
It would prohibit the use of public employees' union dues for political contributions without their explicit consent. It's a Trojan horse whose larger purpose is to tilt the balance of power in politics by limiting union support for Democrats without cutting corporate sources of Republican funding.
"If it passes, it will be so significant, and the effects will be so dramatic, that you would see a dozen initiatives on the ballots [in other states] within two to four years," Norquist said.
Texas Rep. Tom DeLay inspired Schwarzenegger's Proposition 77, which would redraw political districts more to the benefit of Republicans and do so in 2006 rather than after the 2010 census. State and federal districts traditionally are redrawn every 10 years, consistent with the census cycle.
