With California Republican Party Clown Prince Mike Carona Headed For Prison, Meg Whitman Wants The Governor's Chair He Was Slated To Run For

The California GOP: Mike Carona and Meg Whitman

Mike Carona, "America's Sheriff," was long the crown prince of California, the Orange County wingnut they planned to stick us with after Schwarzenegger. But you can't be governor from a prison cell, which will be Carona's home for the next decade or so, so the GOP had to scurry to find someone else. He didn't testify on his own behalf and the jury has been off for the holidays. Closing arguments, for the highest ranking Orange County law enforcement official ever to stand trial, start today.

The California Republican Party, broke, shrinking and riven with infighting, appears to be settling on former eBay head Meg Whitman to lead them to their next electoral disaster. She was a big Romney supporter, having worked with him in the vulture capital firm Bain Capital, destroying American businesses and shipping jobs overseas. After Romney withdrew she served as a McCain co-chair.

Two other Republicans, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Congressman Tom Campbell, are also sniffing around the race. Ex-Governor/current Attorney General Jerry Brown is the probable Democratic nominee, although L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom also want to run. Although Whitman is best known as an ex-CEO of online auctioneers eBay, she cut her teeth on her work at Hasbro, where she ran the Mr. Potato Head department. Although beloved of Wall Street types, eBay users hated her high-handed, authoritarian policies, which turned eBay into a nightmarish hell for users. After running eBay's own payment system into the ground and making it the most hated place on the Internet, she bought much-loved PayPal, and promptly ruined that as well. Another high profile right-wing woman-- also a corporate hack-- who has been eyeing the governor's chair is Carly Fiorina, widely thought to have brought Hewlett Packard to its knees before the company finally fired her for gross incompetence.