Ah-nuld's Ed Gillespie Moment

Remember back during the sorry Harriet Miers imbroglio when former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie responded to the objection of conservative activists to that ill-advised SCOTUS nomination by arrogantly tossing off that some of the unease about Miers "has a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism"? Remember how that incensed the GOP grassroots and did more than anything else to crater the President's poll numbers?

Well, Susan Kennedy is the Governator's Harriet Miers, and Schwartzennegar didn't send an underling to insult Republican activists to their faces - he did it personally:

Public statements after the meeting between the governor and GOP legislators and a similar one held two days later with the executive board of the California Republican Party were upbeat. Mr. Schwarzenegger left the party meeting claiming Republicans were "one big family." He said he told the GOP leaders: "Don't judge me by who I hire, but judge me by my actions."

Um, I'm sorry, but isn't hiring as your chief of staff the same person who was your predecessor's deputy chief an "action"?

Thus when Mr. Schwarzenegger arrived to talk with GOP legislators, the discussion was understandably constrained. After someone brought up Ms. Kennedy, the governor shocked and offended his audience by telling the legislators that "The reason you don't like her is that she's a lesbian, and lives openly with another woman." He explained that he had hired Ms. Kennedy to "make the trains run on time" in his office and that she could devote "24 hours a day" to the job because she didn't have kids. Assemblyman Mike Villines of Fresno then asked if the governor really meant to imply he couldn't hire someone with a family for the top job in his office. The governor then backed down slightly. [emphasis added]

So that's what Ah-nuld really thinks of his fellow Pachyderms in the Gollyfornia legislature? Is that more of his Hollywood slip showing? Or is he getting lazy and looking for somebody else to do the heavy lifting of day-to-day governance? That's what some Donks believe. Said Democrat state Senator Carole Migden to the San Francisco Examiner, she envisions her friend Ms. Kennedy as a kind of dual governor: "Arnold can now go out and campaign and Susan will stay at the Statehouse and get things done."

The Governator's biographer, Lawrence Leamer, looked beyond the visceral slap in the face to GOP legislators and, by extention, grassroots supporters to what this faux pas means for the future of Schwartzeneggar's governorship:

[The governor's reaction to the GOP legislators is] "frightening" because it may show he is no longer learning from people. "Modern politicians aren't troglodytes; they've worked with gays," Mr. Leamer told [John Fund]. "To imply they were homophobes misreads them and may mean he isn't facing reality."

And since Ah-nuld has never failed at anything before, it also may mean that he is "evolving" his definition of success. Which could lead to another failure - one he can't redefine - in November 2006.