Another AP Howler

From the Wall Street Journal:

Reporters thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger made news in the event-starved days before Christmas when he supposedly told a German newspaper he wanted Republicans to "move a little further left and place more weight on the center," as the Associated Press version of his interview had him saying. Pundits immediately jumped on the remarks. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas suggested the Terminator might really "be the Democratic Party's 'plant' inside the GOP." Alan Colmes, the liberal half of the Hannity & Colmes debate show on Fox News, hailed it as evidence that a new "Rockefeller Republican" wing was emerging to counter President Bush.

The Governator certainly does part company on issues such as abortion and promoting hybrid fuel technology. But he was misquoted by German reporter Marc Hujer. What he actually said was: "I think that right now the Republican Party is all the way from the right to the center. And the Democratic Party is all the way from the left to the center. And I like the Republican Party to cross that centerline. Keep it to the right where it is, but I mean cross over that centerline a little bit, because that would take immediately away 5% from the Democrats and be home free for good. That's the trick."

Mr. Hujer says the governor never recommended explicitly that Republicans should edge toward the left. "He did not use the word 'left,"' Mr. Hujer admitted. "This is really unfortunate. I was trying to translate into German political terms." There's another German translation Mr. Hujer might want to familiarize himself with: dummkopf.