There seems to be a new mantra that says, “Republicans are making a mistake in supporting wealthy candidates like Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial primary race; she is just too wealthy to be supported as a candidate.”

After reading the bottom-line in the LA Times Wednesday, it seems that GOP voters are beside themselves.

How can we vote for a woman who has, and spends, so much of her own money?

Reporter Shane Goldmacher writes, “The costly airtime – with the primary election still seven months away – is just one way the former eBay chief is spending the $19 million of her personal fortune that she has plowed into the race.”

“The first-time candidate, a Republican, has also paid for an army of advisers, pricey plane rides and a big technology tab. She spent $6 million in the first half of the year.”

“That sum dwarfed the combined spending of all the other gubernatorial hopefuls: two fellow Republicans, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Congressman Tom Campbell; and two Democrats, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome. Newsome quit the race Friday.”

“Whitman has publicly floated the notion of a record-shattering $150-million campaign budget. That number is turning heads, even among campaign veterans accustomed to deep-pocketed politicos blowing through millions at a time.”

After reading Shane’s accounting you feel that she is too wealthy to gain the conservative vote from the Republican Party – and maybe too wealthy to be governor all-together.

In the LA piece, a few ‘campaign handlers’ take a swipe at her Megness’ riches.

Whitman’s financial pace is “unprecedented spending for a California gubernatorial race,” the LA Times’ sites Jude Barry, campaign manager for the mega-rich State Controller, Steve Westly.

What Meg has spent on her Internet operation is well over $1 million thus far, “nowhere near that has been spent in the past in any campaign that I’ve ever seen,” states veteran consultant Richard Temple of eMeg’s Internet operation.

“How does Whitman feel about being seen as an ATM machine by a lot of political consultants?” Democrat strategist, Darry Sragow, who operated Al Checchi’s 1998 campaign. Checchi, if you remember, was the operator of Northwest Airline and was a billionaire himself.

Sure, Meg Whitman is worth an estimated $1.2 billion, and she has $7.7 million in contributions this year.

Are we making the argument that Meg is unworthy because she is personally successful?

Is Meg Whitman is too wealthy to be the Republican nominee.

When asked, most pessimists jump to the fact that she is spending too much of her own money to earn the right to be the next governor of California. Why, are we as Republicans, against a wealthy, successful private sector, self-funding candidate?

When did that principle enter into the immoral category for the party?

Would we rather set back and give the costly, statewide messaging over to the Democrat candidates, who are happily funded by millions of laundered tax dollars offered through the public employee unions?

And when did we start calling individual profits evil?

Republicans have their millions and millionaires, as do the Democrats – there is a difference.

Yesterday former HP CEO Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for US Senate. She was being introduced more than interviewed, by my fellow Ohio ex-patriot Hugh Hewitt on 1380 KTKZ. After a few minutes of declaration, Candidate Carly Fiorina stressed that she would not be self-funding her campaign.

Why not?

Is the Republican Party telling their wealthy candidates to not self-fund so to gain more voters?

In Wednesday’s LA Times piece, the Steve Poizner Camp was quoted as saying that Whitman is “trying to buy her way into office.” Let me get this straight, eMeg is unethical for spending her own money to fuel her gubernatorial campaign, but Jerry Brown can sit unannounced with millions from the unions and we ‘hope to raise enough money to contest him’ come the general election?

Is this all about sleeping at night; knowing that we’ve satisfied our class envy demon by encouraging Steve, Carly and Meg to not ‘self-fund’, but knowing that Brown and Boxer are? Makes for a strong result come November 2010.

Poizner Point-man Jarrod Agen told me, “Meg Whitman is cutting million dollar checks in order to avoid basic parts of running for office like voting, debating, and talking to the press. Meg promised three debates in the fall, then refused to debate in even one. In Meg’s only press conference as a candidate, she couldn’t remember when she voted or if she ever voted over three decades. To cover up all her mistakes, Meg is on a spending spree which even overshadows the billions she overpaid for Skype.”

Sure enough, but should this dust-up have anything to do with her self-funding her race to be governor?

As an intelligent, conservative Republican voter you don’t need to protect me from my vote, thank you. I can make my own decisions, and trying to tell me that someone is not worthy of my vote because they were too successful in the private sector is insulting to my intelligence.

Next we’ll start calling these people fortunate and lucky. Worse yet, we might hear Republicans start to welcome the concept of government funded campaigns.

As Republicans we believe in profits, the right to earn wealth and the ability of that wealth to be used as one wishes, especially as it relates to communicating one’s own campaign toward civic duty.

Relax; there are plenty of bodies in the wave of previous campaigns where rich candidates depended upon their wealth versus connectivity with the voters. And if Meg makes that mistake, it will cost her dearly – and millions.

But that is the price that Meg is willing to ‘pay’, who are we to tell her she can’t write that check? And if Jerry Brown is the public unions’ option, who would want to?