Governance by petulance.
Cute.
In politics, you help your friends, and you hurt your enemies. That's not petulance, that's just the way things are. When the Fraternal Order of Police did a mass-mailing against Prop 75, they became the enemy. The membership of the FOP are all adults; they can deal with the consequences of their decisions.
And, as far as the whining about the base getting back-stabbed by Arnold: yeah, he did. Of course, everyone's ignoring that he got the knife to do the back-stabbing out of his own back; he's just returning it to its rightful owner.
We Republicans no-showed for this election. Arnold staked everything on this election--he staked everything on Republicans not stabbing him in the back. Well, guess what? We did just that.
Arnold does not owe the base a damn thing as of 11/8/05. I'd suggest that the base do two things:
1. Get a new GOP candidate nominated in March.
2. Actually support that candidate in November.
But, given what a worthless bunch of ego-driven, self-worshipping, donation-grifting idiots we have passing for "grass-roots activism leaders" in this state, neither of those two things is going to happen.