Out here in California, eMeg is spending up a storm -- over $100 million so far. That's before Jerry Brown cranks up his campaign machine.
Problem is, no one likes what she's saying. The more money she spends, the higher her unfavorable ratings go up, and not just with liberals and moderates.
According to SF Gate, the (euphemistically labeled) "conservative wing" of California's GOP plan to call her out on her mixed, muddled messaging around Arizona's AB 1070.
Whitman, who remains in a dead heat with Democrat Jerry Brown despite spending a record-busting $104 million of her own money, will face criticism from some of the 1,000 grassroots party members descending on the Manchester Grand Hyatt starting Friday.
Much of the blowback will come from members of the California Republican Assembly, a group of activists that former President Ronald Reagan called "the conscience of the Republican Party."
Conservatives want the state GOP to approve a resolution backing Arizona's law targeting illegal immigrants and a similar California law, Proposition 187, approved by voters in 1994 but later overturned by a federal judge. Whitman opposes both measures.
The debate could be toxic for Whitman. As far as I can tell, her campaign has been based on a few weird promises to increase state unemployment rates by terminating 40,000 state employees and a lot of vague promises to run the state like a corporation. As far as her views on immigration are concerned, it seems that Whitman adopts whatever position will garner her the most votes. On that score, the conservatives have it right:
Greig isn't worried that a high-profile conversation about the divisive issue will hurt the party's chances in November. "We are standing on principle here," she said. "I do not think pandering to the illegal alien community will help us. They don't vote."
That may be true. But Hispanics vote, and there are a lot of them here in California. Legal ones. With the legal right to vote, and they might not take kindly to the xenophobic attitudes that eMeg and her party espouse.
Bring it on.
