"I’ll be back!" might be more than a toss-away movie line from Arnold Schwarzenegger. After his crushing defeat in the special election he called three months ago (all of his ballot measures going down in flames), the Governator has been zealously re-casting himself.

His eyes set on re-election next November in this very blue state of California, Arnold has quickly moved back to the center. Dropping his slash-and-burn economic austerity proposals of last year, the New Arnold has come up with an FDR-like $200 billion plus blueprint for rebuildinng the state infrastructure.

He’s also playing a bizarre game of political pattycake with the very same unions that he attempted and failed to demonize throughout the course of 2005 (in this effort he’s being assisted by a legendary Democrat: the former California Assembly Speaker and past Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown. Veteran L.A.-based political analyst Joe Scott does his own sift of California’s shifting political sands and concludes that only a fool would rule out a successful comeback by Schwarzenegger.

On a related topic, Democratic operative-turned-journo/blogger Bill Bradley plumbs the inner workings of the Schwarzenegger political machine and asks just what’s going on with the Gov’s top consultant/guru Michael Murphy?