The only explanation is that Schwarzenegger has decided that the "true conservative" Republicans are never going to be in his base, and that he thinks he needs to build a new base that explicitly leaves the "true conservative" Republicans on the outside.
What you had better pray for is that he doesn't succeed in that effort. Because if he does, you're never going to get a damn thing in California ever again.
Worst case for "true conservatives" would be as follows: Schwarzenegger gets thrown out in the primary, runs as an independent in the general election, and wins. The California GOP will officially be dead and buried at that time.
Second-worst case: he survives a bitter, divisive primary, and wins anyway. At that point, "true conservatives" will be forced to make an unpleasant decision: leave the GOP (and lose all that walking-around money), or stay in the GOP (and show themselves to be a bunch of craven money-grubbing wimps).
Over the past 38 years, since coming home from Vietnam, I have seen more effort being spent on trashing "RINOs" of various flavors (sometimes, "RINO" ends up equaling "A guy I agree with generally, but he ain't me, and this state ain't big enough to accomodate both of our egos") than on fighting the loony left in this state. The result is that the legislature is a moonbat-leftist Democrat monopoly.
Rubbish. Schwarzenegger showed his Liberal streak long before this special election fiasco. He's championed MORE gun control, MORE borrowing (and for embryonic stem cell research no less), and MORE liberal judges for California. That ain't the work of anyone who's remotely interested in even trying to pay lip service to the core conservative platforms of the Republican Party.
With that in mind, that whole blame-the-conservatives Bravo Sierra just ain't got legs. Hell, if I came across an animal that lame, I'd put it out of its misery.
What "walking around money"? From what I've read, the CA GOP has left conservatives high-and-dry election after election while asking them to be supportive of their annointed "moderate" candidate.
Around the time we came home from Vietnam the hippies were infecting the country everyplace. Hippies were the prototype for those now who decry 'rino' this and 'rino' that. Rich hippies pretended to be poor, poor hippies pretended to have left rich families, etc, etc, etc. They all had a lie to fit into their hippy culture. It is the same way amongst our enemy, demoncraps. It is probably old hippies using their same ol' technique, lying. Pretending to be what they are not and lying to achieve their disruptive results. Y'all must not accept anything on face value and don't believe any nonsense, just because someone with a FReeper handle has said so. We must judge each post for its own value. It becomes like arithmetic, a post either adds, subtracts or divides from our collective perception. Occasionally, there are great posts which multiply our perception. The ones which add or multiple are what we must aim for, and use the one's which subtract or divide to identify those among us who desire the reduction.