Whitman's words can come back to bite her if Poizner pounces

Meg Whitman's nonstop five-month barrage of radio ads has vaulted her into a huge poll lead in the Republican run for governor, with most surveys showing her ahead of rival Steve Poizner by about 30 percentage points. The same polls show she's drawn almost even with Democrat Jerry Brown, the presumptive Democratic candidate to replace Gov...Schwarzenegger.

It's a position once enjoyed by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who held a similar lead over rival Bill Simon at just about the same time in 2002, when the primary election was contested much earlier than this year's date of June 8. Riordan lost the nomination.

One reason: While he was well-known at the campaign's start and Simon was not, Riordan had said some things about which most Republican voters were unaware, referring to parts of California outside Los Angeles as "strange places," waffling on issues such as abortion and gun control. When a series of TV commercials funded by then-Gov. Gray Davis revealed some of this, Riordan's support quickly evaporated. It had been a mile wide and less than an inch deep, as the political cliché goes.

Very unlike Simon, Poizner has already invested almost 20 million of his own dollars in his run, has $18 million on hand and will not need help from any Democrat to publicize some Whitman remarks that Republican voters probably won't care for. When he does that, the depth of the support Whitman's radio ads have ginned up will be tested. But Poizner will have to go on the air soon to achieve much effect, as Whitman has now added TV commercials to her radio ads. If he dawdles, it will quickly become too late for him to accomplish much.

It rubs me the wrong way to see Whitman act like she has half a clue when she didn’t even bother to vote in the past, and thought folks like McCain were the people she should be backing.

A pile of money and nothing else to do with it, doesn’t a sound governor make.

If you don’t bother to vote, then you don’t know the issues. You are not qualified to govern if you haven’t been studying the candidates and issues enough to back them.

I was dumb enough to advocate for Schwarzenegger and vote for him. If I had it to do over, I'd vote for someone else even knowning it would hand victory to the racist uber-liberal Cruz Bustamonte, who was Arnold's opponent. In hindsight, I think there's a very good chance that in the long run, Cruz would have done less damage because he would have mobilized a Republican backlash. Arnold has paralyzed any such backlash.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ... You can wear the Elephant lapel pin and register as a Republican, but you're still a big-government nanny stater whose upper management executive midsent substitutes "state administration" for "company" and "taxpayers" for "employees" you presume to manage. That mindset has no more concern for my freedom as an individual than a company executive has for freedom of his employees. In the private sector, that's the way it should be -- it's understood that employees forfeit certain aspects of freedom when they go to work. But in the public sector, it just means another elite socialist wants to make me a slave.

Meg, it's a shame you came to the beautiful state my ancestors helped pioneer 150 years ago and which Republicans like Reagan and a whole lotta native Californians made bountiful for folks like you to come in like locusts and destroy. Californa USED to be a solidly Republican state, and that is what made it so prosperous, safe, and attractive to liberals like you.

GO BACK TO THE MIDWEST OR BOSTON OR WHERE EVER IT IS YOU CAME FROM.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.