Surprise! Meg Whitman Uses Personal Fortune to Mount Nasty Hardball Campaign

Meg Whitman, wannabe conservative, Vann Jones acolyte, and GOP gubernatorial candidate, apparently knows a thing or two about Saul Alinsky. See, "Whitman No Rookie at Playing Hardball":

Meg Whitman is campaigning for governor as a political outsider, but behind the scenes she is playing classic political hardball in her quest for the Republican nomination.

She tried to push her chief GOP opponent, Steve Poizner, out of the primary contest with a consultant's threat to wage a negative ad campaign that would destroy his career. Her advisors have worked, with some success, to siphon away Poizner supporters, orchestrating calls by former Gov. Pete Wilson and others for the party to unite -- four months before the primary election -- behind her candidacy.

And Whitman's team warned labor leaders that if they gave money to Democratic operatives planning to attack her, the billionaire candidate would respond by spending millions to qualify a ballot initiative that would make it harder for unions to use dues for political purposes.

Observers say Whitman's embrace of rough-and-tumble politics should surprise no one, given her track record as the hard-nosed former chief executive of EBay.

"She's coming from a world that's absolutely a hardball world," said Thad Kousser, a visiting professor at Stanford University who specializes in state politics. "And anybody who thinks you don't become a politician being the CEO of a major corporation is crazy."

Asked about the tough moves by Whitman and her aides, her spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said her campaign "is committed to putting her in the most effective position" to explain her vision for improving California. He said talking to voters is her main focus.

Political analysts say Whitman's use of her wealth to intimidate her opponents -- she's moved $39 million of her own money into her campaign -- can backfire if voters believe she is trying to buy the election. Wealthy executives have won as political newcomers elsewhere but have largely failed in California.

The image of Whitman, 53, using her riches as a club was on display this month when Poizner -- himself a multimillionaire -- released an e-mail to his camp from her consultant, Mike Murphy. It said she could spend $40 million "tearing up" Poizner, also 53.

"It's arrogance," said K.B. Forbes, a GOP communications consultant who is not working in California at the moment. "It's going to turn off the electorate."

As I've said a couple of times, I wish we had Bob McDonnell in California:

See also, Michelle, "Memo to GOP Candidates: Stop Mindlessly Praising Commies in Green Clothing," and John Hawkins, "Meg Whitman’s Slap In The Face Of Sarah Palin Fans: Hiring Mike Murphy."

The Coffee Party Movement

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I doubt tea partiers could care one whit about the homage the "Coffee Party Movement" pays to conservative activists. I mean, seriously, this woman, Annabel Park, a recent Korean immigrant, puts a kinda every-woman gloss on the Joan Walsh-Keith Olbermann-Janeane Garofalo "racist tea-bagger" smears we've been hearing for a year now. Indeed, it's offensive to hear her basically allege that tea partiers reject diversity. Olbermann's already been hammered from all quarters for his idiot rant a couple of weeks ago. Frankly, we'd see more diversity on the conservative right except for the victimology stranglehold that's inculcating a grievance ideology and cultist politics among minority communities today. And when minorities break out of that death-grip, they're branded as racist "minority front groups" for the hegemonic white supremacist power structure. It's pretty contorted, but listen to Miss Park sing it! She hits all the right notes about the left's "reality-based" program and she excoriates the "extremist" politics of the tea partiers. Hmm ... you get the feeling that in fact she's a tool herself, of the Obama power-cult of Daily Kos-OFA-SEIU-MoveOn.org mind-crush totalitarians.

In any case, no one's fooled by this woman's simplistic diversity-based charm. But FWIW, see WaPo's piece, "Coffee Party Activists Say Their Civic Brew's a Tastier Choice Than Tea Party's." (Via Memeorandum.) And see Moonbattery, "Progressive "Coffee Parties" Let the Crap Fly."

Is Andrew Breitbart Breaking Down?

Did you see this?

Joan Walsh, who previously slurred tea party patriots as "traitors," attacked Andrew Breitbart at CPAC as unhinged, arguing that his brutal take down of the Salon sleazebags "doesn't get the work done."

Oh, but it does, Joan. Which is why Max Blumenthal is now reduced to making new allegations against "racist black front groups."

In any case, Founding Bloggers repsponds, "(EXCLUSIVE VIDEO) Did Andrew Breitbart “Breakdown” At CPAC?":

Apparently, Salon.com doesn’t think that anger and outrage are normal reactions for a human being to have in response to being falsely smeared and branded a racist.

Salon.com sees the videos of an angry Andrew Breitbart as not much more than an opportunity to ridicule someone with whom they disagree.

By using these videos in this particular way, Salon reveals that it considers the righteous indignation of a man falsely accused to be funny. A real knee-slapper.

That’s very revealing because the videos that the folks at Salon.com are promoting clearly demonstrate why Breitbart is so furious. He explains it to their cameras repeatedly. Perhaps the editors at Salon.com are too politically tone deaf to hear the message.

See also, Big Journalism, "How the World Works: Max Blumenthal and His Vicious Alinsky Tactics."

RELATED: "Libel Blogger David Hillman (Swash Zone) Workplace Harassment Fail."

There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't Be Done...

Remember HillBuzz last month, describing Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, et al.?

Honestly, we thought the extent of the attacks would be more of the same thing these people usually do, which is to say bad things about this site, to fill our voicemails up with nasty messages, to send more hatemail to our email telling us how much they want us to get AIDS and die, or how they’re going to find us in Boystown and beat us up. These are the people who threw rocks through our windows in 2008 because we had Hillary Clinton posters in them, and who’ve called us racists consistently for not supporting Dr. Utopia, as either a candidate or the Socialist in Chief he is now. That’s what the Left does to anyone who defies them: they call you a racist, harass you, and threaten violence against you.

And more recently at Whiskey Fire on S.E. Cupp and Tucker Carlson:

... there are in fact no such entities as "S. E. Cupp" or "The Daisy Call-Girl" and that nobody is dumb enough to believe you could ever get rich by banking on the likability of horrible halfwit dishwater failures like Tucker Carlson .... Fuck fuck fuckely fuck fuck fuckbooger fuckbananas fuck.

And then Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin:

She is Coughlin with boobs – except with a foreign policy agenda to expand Israel and unite with it in a war against Islam ... Do not under-estimate the appeal of a beautiful, big breasted, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war.

Then Demon-Machine on Tiger Woods' recent public apology:

Tiger Woods addresses a waiting nation and declares that he LIKES TO FUCK. A lot."

And Doug-e at Brain Rage:

... UPDATE ... NEWSFLASH! ... Dick Cheney and Bob Dole are both hospitalised. Bad batch of Viagra suspected?...

And a self-descriptive David Hillman projecting his deep-seated eliminationist hatred onto conservative "reactionaries":

... reactionary ideas and talking points have infected public discourse to such a degree that it is poisoning how we treat each other in our daily lives. It is a political subculture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of outright elimination of the opposing side through suppression, condemnation, ostracism, or extermination.

Radical leftists are filled with rage and hatred and death-wish determination to destroy the ideological other. The left's hatred is not difficult to find - "it's easy". They should chill with some Beatles, for a little while, at least:

Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.

Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love. (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) Yesterday (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) (love is all you need)

Yee-hai!
Oh yeah!
love is all you need, love is all you need,love is all you need, love is all you need, oh yeah oh hell yea! love is all you need love is all you need love is all you need.

Cross-posted from American Power.

So Where Are We on Race?

From Victor Davis Hanson, "We Have Race on the Brain":

The United States is a vast multiracial society that, despite multiculturalism, embraces one official language and still shares a common culture. Among the middle classes, race doesn’t matter all that much, and the society is not plagued by endemic racial and religious violence we typically see abroad.

But among the elite, where the lucrative jobs, prestige, and big money are — sports, entertainment, law, academia, medicine, high-power finance, big government and politics — our elites con each other. They often strain to find some sort of ethnic or racial or gender edge over the competition. Most Americans assume racial affinities and go about their business; elite utopians demand there be none — and then prove themselves far more racialist.

If white, the careerist elite professes to be liberal and a diversity proponent while himself conning to rely on his money, background and contacts to nullify the new diversity prejudice. Usually at universities, the white guy top administrator would surround himself with diversity appointments and talk down about the faculty’s lack of diversity. Most ignored the bottled piety and assumed the careerist dinosaur just wanted to survive. The white-guy leftist on television will talk ad nauseam about diversity on the assumption that such preemption shields him from the sort of diversity affirmative action salvo that might knock out his own job.

One of the reasons I liked farming (six contiguous neighbors — two Armenians, one Japanese, one Punjabi, one Mexican, one German) was that action not pretense mattered. And stereotypes were OK, if instantly backed by empirical evidence and if not pressed too far.

In contrast, one reason I disliked academia was that in such a dry, bored self-created landscape, pretense trumped action, and one’s tribe, not one’s essence, was the key to career advancement. I never heard a Mexican neighbor say he was Mexican or an Armenian vineyard grower talk of his vaunted heritage or the German claim privilege — they all succeeded or failed on their own ability, or lack of, to grow food at a profit.

In academic lala land, scholarship and teaching too often came second, bumper-sticker identification first — another sign that with supposed intellectual progress, so often comes moral regress.

RELATED: "Foundations of Whiteness and White Domination?"

Talking Tea Parties

Via Dana Loesch, good stuff from Founding Bloggers, "Talking Tea (NSFW)":

These guys are the best!

'Secure Nation'

Via Jules Crittenden, "Secure Nation":

Notes Jules:

Mike Slagh, an active-duty naval officer currently at Harvard’s JFK School and headed after that to EOD school, has started up Secure Nation, a somewhat academic military-civilian interface discussion forum … despite my best advice to him that putting your opinions on the Internet is sure to bring only scorn, ridicule and professional opprobrium.

Sharp-looking site. Slagh promises it will run a full spectrum of political views and it looks like, with a few posts up, it’s already headed that way with some thoughtful posts on variety of subjects and a submission form for anyone who wants to jump in. Slagh’s also asked me for a guest blog, which pretty much confirms he’s willing to live dangerously although I expect to behave and will be rummaging* around for some deep thots. I like the fact that everyone so far has a name attached. Easier to respect someone’s opinion when they are willing to stand by it.

Probably not as wild as GSGF, but I'll definitely be heading over there for some of the debates!

So what are you waiting for? Check out that post at the screencap: "A Centrist Approach to Reforming Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."

RELATED: "Army and Air Force Chiefs Voice Concern Over Ending 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'."