The political group of Schwarzenegger allies known as Citizens To Save California has settled on a package of reform initiatives for a special election. But the real question might be how dissension among Republicans will affect a campaign to get some of those measures passed.

Most notable in the CSC package, outlined in a briefing this morning for Capitol reporters, is the decision to endorse the Live Within Our Means initiative (read it here). Among other things, the budget reform proposal would use the level of state spending in years past to calculate the level of state spending in any new budget proposal... and presumably, to keep that spending from growing too fast. The initiative also gives the governor the power to balance the budget with mid-year cuts.

By mid-morning, Schwarzenegger quickly released a statement of his own endorsing the measure, saying it will "put an end to the runaway spending."

So, everyone on the Schwarzenegger side of politics is happy, right? Wrong.

The internal battle over what kind of budget reform initiative should be on the ballot seems to again highlight deep divisions within Republican circles about Schwarzenegger's budget reform credentials.

In fact, the backers of a different-- and more stringent-- budget initiative quickly called Schwarzenegger's endorsement a "huge mistake."

"It's a shame to waste the governor's political capital on pretend government reform," said Dave Gilliard, a longtime GOP political consultant. Gilliard is representing an alternate initiative that would limit state spending based partly on the cost of inflation, a formula that he says would reign in spending more tightly than the initiative Schwarzenegger has now endorsed.
Gilliard echoes what I've heard privately from other Republicans: a fear that Schwarzenegger is going down the same path as he did in 2004, when he agreed to Democrat demands that a relatively strict spending cap proposal be modified to a simple balanced budget amendment that became Proposition 58.

Now, with Democratic battle lines hardening against the governor's reform campaign, it will be interesting to see whether Republicans rally around the governor, or whether the internal disagreements turn into public squabbles.