Rick And Arnie, Not Sitting In A Tree

There's little secret that the Republican coalition of fiscal, social, pro-small government, and religious conservatives has run the risk of unraveling for quite some time (a profligate administration with a penchant for domestic surveillance that failed to overturn Roe versus Wade will do that.) But John McCain seems to be trying to patch that back together by picking up passengers of the Rudy Giuliani campaign bus.

McCain has rolled out the fact that he now has the governors of two of the biggest states of the union – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of Texas and our own Gov. Rick Perry – signed on as endorsers. Perry was the Texas face of the Giuliani campaign and gave him some conservative credentials: Arnie had stayed out of the endorsement business, split between the two men with whom he represented the relatively centrist wing of the party.

But don't look for hugs between the two governors. Their last major shared public appearance was the remarkably uncomfortable Republican Party Convention, where guest-of-honor Perry went out of his way to insult Schwarzenegger (he basically called him a Demycrat.) So is this really a binding show of party unity?