GOP12: Will Palin fans revolt against Whitman?

With Mike Murphy's sudden role in the Meg Whitman campaign becoming very public, conservative blogger John Hawkins is echoing a sentiment I've been seeing percolate on Sarah Palin message boards.

Hawkins (ea):



So when Meg Whitman, who's running for governor, chose to hire Mike Murphy, what does it say?

It says that she holds Sarah Palin's many fans in the Republican party in absolute contempt. She thinks so little of them and feels their support is so unwanted for her campaign, that she's going to hire a guy like Mike Murphy, who made more of a name for himself trashing Sarah Palin than he did working for the McCain campaign.

Well, here's what I say: Any candidate who hires Mike Murphy, Steve Schmidt, or Nicolle Wallace -- the McCain staffers who trashed Palin -- that candidate is dead to me.

Trouble for Whitman? Probably not. This is California we're talking about. In fact, if Whitman makes it past the primary, she might welcome words like these.

Already, Whitman seems to have taken steps to distance herself from Palin (e.g. avoiding mentioning her name altogether in her recent book, and adroitly pivoting from a probing question on Morning Joe), while Democrats are beginning to try to tie the two together.

Carla Marinucci, in December 2009:


California's 700,000-member progressive Courage Campaign has Palin as its marquee name in a fundraising letter that's out this week.... That's right, the organization's new fundraising push lambastes GOP candidate and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as -- ouch! -- "California's Sarah Palin.''