The Meg Whitman mess: Could it be...
10/03/2010
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Increasingly it looks as if Meg Whitman, the catastrophic GOP candidate for Governor of California, is not very bright.

I know, I know, Princeton, Harvard MBA, $1.3 Billion fortune - Affirmative action? Overpaid and fortuitously-positioned bureaucrat? Remember, Whitman is not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates - she did not invent EBAY.

 

How else to explain spending several years preparing to run for office and not facing and fixing the problem of having an illegal alien housekeeper? Did she think the immigration issue could be excluded? That the voters were too dumb to think of it?

 

Even worse, how else to explain Whitman courts Latinos in bid to defuse controversy over maid By Michael J. Mishak and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times October 2, 2010

Meg Whitman's campaign for governor has doubled its advertising on Spanish-language radio and increased the number of its Latino television spots by roughly 50% as the former EBay chief executive seeks to blunt the impact of news that she employed, then fired, an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.

This is really stupid. The pro-illegal segment of the Hispanic electorate is hardly likely to resent her employing one. They all know one has to run when La Migra shows up. And they probably also know that, like President Obama's Aunt Zeituni, politics has rendered the woman in question invulnerable, as our friend Federale points out.

 

The section of the electorate which will resent the news, and will probably respond by not showing up to vote, are the Republicans who supported the far superior Steve Poizner and want better immigration control. They will already have noted Whitman's back-tracking after the Primary -  as the Los Angeles Times notes

The candidate was forced to the right on immigration during the Republican primary, promising to be "tough as nails" on illegal immigrants.

But within days of winning the June primary, Whitman's rhetoric swung to the center, and she began an aggressive pursuit of Latino voters. Whitman already has done more to court California's Latino electorate than any Republican in modern memory, opening neighborhood offices; flooding Spanish-language airwaves, including ads during the World Cup; erecting billboards in Latino communities and signs at bus stops; and quashing a divisive debate at the state GOP convention about Arizona's controversial immigration crackdown.

Most probably already thought Whitman was a selfish billionaire whose interest in immigration issues extended only to her personal convenience - like Mayor Bloomberg. And it looks as though they were right. What evidence is there that Whitman could be trusted?

 

Peter Brimelow takes the view that campaign consultants have a lot to do with messes like this. Faced with a rich and gullible candidate like Whitman the objective becomes maximizing the Ad spend. Campaigns are shaped not to win but to run through as much campaign funding as is available.

 

Meg Whitman, perhaps can afford this fiasco. California cannot.

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