He wants us to terminate the party, how quaint. Courting the center contributed to the current mess.
"Conservatives" almost cost us the presidential election in 2000, by voting for Buchanan, instead of Bush, and almost electing Al Gore.
"Conservatives" are the one to "teach George HW Bush a lesson", and gave us 8 years of Bill Clinton and a launchpad for President Hillary.
Of course, smart conservatives voted for Bush I and Bush II and turned out to vote Republican this election. I am talking about the "other" so-called conservatives, who keep helping the Dems, while claiming to be so "conservative".
There's a right way to court the center and a wrong way to court the center.
The wrong way is to take whatever position you think they hold at the moment. This doesn't work because it's hard to figure out exactly what positions you need to adopt, and the center, being fickle, will change on you. Overall, you'll wind up looking weak.
The right way is to take positions that you believe in, and then convince the center that you're right about them. If you can do that, then you're on much stronger ground because you can get the independent vote and appeal to your base at the same time. You'll also force your opponent to try to play in enemy territory, so to speak.
Kinda like what happened in the state of Massachusetts. Weld basically helped destroy the MA Republican party.
I dont think courting the center is offensive, I just think Arnold's centrist politics is the wrong flavor of RINO. Arnold helped to give us a huge tax increase with 40 billion of borrowing.
Maybe a socially liberal version of McClintock would probably be a winning flavor of RINO.
The only good thing is Arnold may be our chance to eliminate Boxer. And thats the only good thing.