Schwarzenegger Drawing Ire Of Socially Conservative Republicans

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger is creating new political enemies and most of them are coming from within his own party.

Schwarzenegger has openly opposed Proposition 8 and expressed hope that the courts will overturn it. He has also been more liberal than the mainstream of the Republican Party on social and environmental issues.

Schwarzenegger may be trying to carve out room in the center as he eyes a possible Senate seat in the future. He also may be trying to emerge as one of the leading social moderates in the Republican Party, along the lines of Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Representative Peter King of New York.

Schwarzenegger, who is ineligible to run for President since he is a naturalized American citizen, is one of the increasingly vocal moderates countering the more conservative wing that backs prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin.

It is those conservatives who are now turning on Schwarzenegger as he approaches the last years of his time as California Governor.

That Schwarzenegger is “condoning street protests and supporting judicial activist scams to overturn a popularly approved state constitutional amendment approaches advocacy of anarchy,” said an action alert from the Family Research Council, which urges conservatives to contact Schwarzenegger’s office.