For two years I have been hearing about Meg Whitman from the usual sources, Republican activists desperate for any candidate with even the slightest chance to win a Statewide campaign in California.

I have watched her on TV, YouTube, and I read her campaign email blasts. So when the opportunity to see the latest Republican plutocrat candidate for statewide office come to Lafayette, for $18, I jumped on the opportunity to see her live and up close at a Common Wealth Club event.

Watching Whitman, I realized quickly that she is very polished and, for a political newcomer, she is well coached. She started by channeling her free spirit Rosy-the-Riveter mother. A brilliant woman who cloned Whitman with her genius and independence.

It’s very clear who her enemies are… unions, state employees, and Democratic politicians

With Whitman in the horseshoe in Sacramento, the political combat will be intense beyond anything we have seen to date. Yet listening to her speak reminded me of my days in the corporate world when the CEO came down to give a presentation to the workers. It is obvious after listening to her, Whitman has spent most of her life being the smartest person in the room. Or at least believing this to be so. A person this smart takes her lessons from her political advisers and can be on message by being subtle on some subjects and direct on others.

As I listened, Whitman’s message was clear to me. She is going to (if elected) move into the governor’s office like a CEO who is taking over a company that is losing money. Whitman says she is going to cut spending and eliminate regulations on business. She gives the usual load of lip service to small business and how they are the creative engines of our economy.

But it was very clear who her political enemies are… unions, state employees, and Democratic politicians. 

Whitman is a skilled communicator. What she understates is more important than the larger points he makes.

She stated that California needs to change the work rules for overtime. That we need to go back to no overtime until you have worked over 40 hours in a week as opposed to the current work place rules that requires overtime after 8 hours in a day.

Whitman explained these work rules such as a 15 minute break every 2 hours are causing disruption in the hotel industry or for workers who want flexible schedules to work 10 hours a day.  No doubt, such a stance will help with fundraising from the hotel industry.

Whitman also stated that she would not raise taxes on Indian gambling casinos. The strategy probably is to send a message to those interests that, “Hey, I’m on your side!”

Apparently, public employees are public enemy number one. Whitman’s analysis had her eliminating 40,000 of them over four years through an employment freeze and retirement. Of course while this sounds good in theory in practice this can create serious problems in practice.

She also paid homage to Agra-business in California who are suffering the indignity of not getting their full 75% of California’s fresh water supply. In an ironic bit of fiscal irresponsibility, Whitman supports the dept-laden water bond.  If you are a big corporate interest in California she is your gal.

Whitman took a CEO type swipe at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; who, by any objective measure, has been a complete and utter failure. The irony here, is Whitman is being sold to the California electorate on financial steroids by the same folks that brought us Arnold.

With Whitman in the horseshoe in Sacramento, the political combat will be intense beyond anything we have seen to date.

There were quite a few media folks at the event. At the end of the speech and screened questions and answer session they had Whitman backed up against a wall. Video cameras raised, voice recorders deployed. I decided to go and listen. After about a minute, her handlers shouted “enough” and pushed her through the door to escape the grasping media. The disgust and frustration on the faces of the media was apparent. There is going to come a time when she is going to have to talk to the media and take direst questions from the audience.

Whitman has all the skills and smarts to be the next governor of California. She has the best consultants money can buy. But as Governor Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush proved getting elected is one thing. Having a governing philosophy that works is another.

After observing Whitman I concluded she will have a very combative term as Governor. In a direct shot at Schwarzenegger, Whitman stated that she is not afraid to be disliked. The changes she will try to make may be necessary but they will require compromise and incredible political skill to raise taxes and cut spending.

To my mind I would prefer a veteran politician. With Whitman in the horseshoe in Sacramento, the political combat will be intense beyond anything we have seen to date.

With the electorate angry and ready for change, it will be interesting to see if  they will lift her to the top job in California. Yet, as every Californian now knows, it is a risky business to elect celebrities to high office. Add to the fact that Whitman is tightly controlled by her handlers, so that, once again, Californians may not know what they are buying until it was too late.

In an e-mail blast this afternoon, the California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring, crowed about the perceived good news concerning the 2010 Governor and Senate races:

The new year is only 12 days old and already it’s turning out to be a bad one for Barbara Boxer, and an even worse one for Jerry Brown.

Republicans have a solid field of candidates to choose from in the June primary here in California. Each of the candidates demonstrates the leadership and strength necessary to take full advantage of the national trend that has shifted decidedly away from Democrats.

This week it was revealed that the national Democratic Party has such low confidence in the lazy Jerry Brown campaign that they’re planning an independent expenditure bailout of his candidacy. The fact that the Democrats have to shift national money to the California governor’s race when they have 36 other state governor races to worry about is an extraordinary vote of no confidence in Jerry Brown.

In the Senate race, Barbara Boxer this week was treated to yet another blow as nationally recognized analyst Charlie Cook named her Senate seat as one of nine Democrat-held seats that are ‘in play’ in 2010.

A national political environment favoring Republicans is one half of a winning political formula. The other half is having a strong field of winning candidates, and for the U.S. Senate and Governor, California Republicans have extraordinarily solid candidates to choose from.

Marc Sheppard at The American Thinker, discusses some of the flawed source code used to fake Climate data which has become the basis for massive policy inlcuding Cap and Trade, International agreements at Copenhagen, even California’s insane AB 32.

Adjustment routines and data rearrangers massaged and buffed data like a Russian Hooker.

This veritable goldmine has given us tales ranging from evidence destruction to spitting on the Freedom of Information Act on both sides of the Atlantic. But the now-irrefutable evidence that alarmists have indeed been cooking the data for at least a decade may be the most important strike in human history…

Advocates of the global governance/financial redistribution sought by the United Nations at Copenhagen in two weeks, and also those of the expanded domestic governance/financial redistribution sought by Liberal politicians, both substantiate their drastic proposals with the pending climate emergency predicted in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Kyoto, Waxman-Markey, Kerry-Boxer, EPA regulation of the very substances of life — all bad policy concepts enabled solely by IPCC reports. And the IPCC in turn bases those reports largely on the data and charts provided by the research scientists at CRU — largely from tree ring data — who just happen to be editors and lead authors of that same U.N. panel.

Bottom line: CRU’s evidence is now irrevocably tainted. As such, all assumptions based on that evidence must now be reevaluated and readjudicated. And all policy based on those counterfeit assumptions must also be reexamined.

We’ve been lied to all along by the Left, Al Gore, President Obama, Kyoto, Waxman-Markey, Kerry-Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, the EPA, California Air Resource Board including State Senator Mark DeSaulnier, Darrel Steinberg, Joan Buchanan, George Miller, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If you want to run as a Republican for the top offices (Governor, U.S. Senate, or California Secretary of State), you better be a plutocrat or forget about running.

The California Republican Party is so broke that nobody without their own buckets of cash should even look at the job. The upshot is the super-rich neophytes drown out any remaining experienced politicians out of running for higher office.

The current list of well-healed GOP candidates includes :

- Damon Dunn Secretary of state
- Carly Fiorina  US Senate
- Meg Whitman Governor
- Steve Poizner Governor

Lately the importance of being wealthy has been proven by Meg Whitman’s current radio campaign. She has been dominating the local radio air waves and drowning out her Republican competitors like (Al Gore supporter) moderate Republican turned conservative Steve Poizner and the thinking person’s candidate Tom Campbell. Campbell to my mind is the best candidate because he has real political experience and intellectual fire power but he is being flooded by Whitman’s message of focusing on the economy.

In a state with a U3 unemployment rate of 12.5 percent Whitman’s is a solid strategy. In a recent Rasmussen poll she has pulled even with Democrat Jerry Brown in the race for Governor. Yet, I still wonder. If creating positive change to California government and improving our economy was easy as slashing taxes and laying off state workers and throwing out illegal aliens—all Whitman proposals—and returning the free market—whatever your perception of that is—this would have been done a long time ago.

The fact is that California since the gold rush has been a land of booms and busts. I worry that the same folks that brought us our last saviour, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are again selling us pabulum in a time of clear desperation for many Californians.

Whitman lately has been tapping into populist anger against career politicians, she has stated that “she has had it with career politicians” and I would agree there are as many bad politicians as there are bad CEOs, but not every career politician is bad. 

My political hero Pete Wilson (Whitman supporter) was also was a career politician, and he was the best governor this state ever had. Wilson had the guts to get in the back room and go eye to eye with Willie Brown in a titanic struggle over the future of California in the early 1990’s.

I don’t see anything in Whitman’s resume that equips her to go head to head with the entrenched interests that run Sacramento. If anything, as a CEO of  non-union EBAY she strikes me as more of a compromise candidate than the leader of unvarnished capitalism and that political ruse of small goverment Republicanism. A couple of curious choices she made that will test her Republican bonafides was her 2004 love letter to Senator Barbara Boxer endorsing her reelection and calling her leadership courageous. Does this mean Whitman thinks Boxer is not a career politician? Then her recent charity foundations showers donations on environmental groups. 

So the question begs: is Whitman reallyArnold Schwarzenegger in a skirt?

With massive government deficits as high as $20-25 billion looming next year Californians should demand specifics from our candidates for all offices and take a long hard look at who is the best person for the job and not be swayed by boat loads of campaign cash and snappy media buys.

Governor Schwarzenegger, your administration has been a disaster for California. But here is a chance to do something good.

Sign Senate Bill 702. This bill sponsered by California State Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-07) would require thorough criminal background checks for temporary child-care providers and all employees that care for children. The Bill was inspired by a young Contra Costa County family’s horrific experience with an abusive employee working at a gym’s temporary day-care facility.

“This bill protects children and businesses from predators looking to take advantage of an overlooked aspect of childcare,” said DeSaulnier.

SB 702 received bipartisan support in both the Senate and Assembly. SB 702 passed the Senate (23-5) Thursday.

The governor has until Oct. 11 to sign or veto the bill.

Arnold even for you this is a no-brainer.