Concierge voting

Meg Whitman (R-eBay) knows the price of everything, but does she know the value of anything? She's running for governor of California - and thinks she's qualified - despite having never even registered to vote between attaining the age of majority in 1974 and, apparently, 2002. That means she never voted before age 46 - hardly a youthful indiscretion. It also means that she has probably never served on a jury, even if she has been called in the last seven years.

Without juries and voting, I wonder what exactly she thinks our form of government is about. Was even the Magna Carta a mistake? She's in the right party, though, the party that's opposed to government. She was standing on principle! Though it is odd that she now wants to run the state that is home to more than one in eight Americans.

Maybe she would have been able to grace us with her votes if her city hall or voting precinct had had concierge service to allow her to skip waiting in line with hoi polloi. Airports and the FAA are getting this. Restaurants and even hospitals provide valet parking. Couldn't we make it easier for the long-suffering high-self-esteem population to cut line in front of the rest of us, as is their due? Oh, pity the poor wealthy!

Watch this story. The Sacramento Bee broke it, referencing a Business Week story from 2000, and CNN brought it to my attention. If it were about a Democrat, Fox would go wall-to-wall on it. But Whitman is a Republican. Will this die quietly with no louder criticism than tut-tut?

Update: No mention on Fox...

Wargaming Mitt and Meg

Mitt "So Insincere Even the Republican Base Could Tell" Romney is still aiming for the Presidency in 2012. He has started to organize his life so that he doesn't face the same ridicule for his personal housing empire that John McCain did last year.

Mitt's spending money to be more of a player, and Meg Whitman in California is perfect for him. Everything that's true about her is that she's a wealthy Republican, just like Mitt. She's even pro-choice, maybe not even expediently and insincerely the way Mitt was in 2002 here in Massachusetts. But what they both are about is making the world safe for billionaires, and the rest of us are on our own.

The objective for liberals, besides beating Whitman in California, is to make Romney pay with the Republican base for supporting her. In this, Sarah Palin is our natural ally. After all, we really want Obama to face her when he runs for re-election. She'd be the weakest general election Republican since, uh, McCain.

Our point of leverage, of course, is abortion. We need video of Romney waffling and excusing Whitman's heterodox Republican views to kill him with the Republican base.

The script for an ad against him would have this outline:

• Mitt Romney - pro-choice in Massachusetts in 2002
• Mitt Romney - claimed conversion epiphany to pro-life in 2006, just in time to run for President
• Mitt Romney - backing a pro-choice candidate for governor of California in 2010
• Mitt Romney - what does he really believe? Can we count on him? Does he believe in anything besides wealth? Is ambition instead of principle what guides him?

That ought to push the Republicans to go one more cycle without being willing to nominate a candidate outside their frothing wingnut base.