Some observations from the first full day at the California Republican Convention in Santa Clara.

Meg Whitman and the press have made-up and become friends. I was more than honored to moderate the ‘fire side chat’ between Governor Mitt Romney and Meg Whitman at the close of the first evening’s festivities.

I was also witness to two eMeg press conferences.  

On both occasions Meg Whitman drove the media to their deadlines. During a 45-minute afternoon dialogue in the GOP Press Room, Meg engaged the press and caused many of them to run out of questions; some mentioned that they needed to leave the room to attend to the facilities to rid themselves of their morning coffee.

Meg returned to the cameras, microphones, mini-video recorders and assorted audio recording devices immediately after the conclusion of the evening festivities in the main ballroom. Whitman was still standing – in her professional flats on the main stage answering all questions from the attending columnists, bloggers and all self-described media’s questions for another 30-minutes.

It seems like there is a new romance in eMeg’s life. The campaign has taken off the ‘governor’ and Meg Whitman has shown to be more than apt, calm and calculating. And this happens right before the first major debate on Monday night; not a moment too soon for many.

Meg TV makes its debut at the Hyatt Regency; channel 32.

Meg Whitman’s campaign purchased the hotel’s in-house satellite channel 32 for the entire weekend, and then promptly turned its programming into “Wood-chipper TV”.

All weekend long when you return to your room from the day’s events and you scroll through your flat screen TV in the room, you stumble upon a 4-minute continuous loop of Steve Poizner’s most egregious political positions.

The long form commercial starts by stating, “Steve Poizner is not a conservative.” Then it begins it list of forum quotes offered by Steve Poizner before his born again conservative leanings developed.

The opening vignette is a close-up of Steve Poznier stating, “I’ve already come out against the right-wing part of my party when it involves a woman’s right to choose, environmental issues, stem cell research, open primaries and the redistricting initiative.”

Then it cascades into Poizner’s presentation about his 100-percent rating from Planned Parenthood and his fight to reduce Prop 13′s hold on local educational taxes, as Poizner voted to reduce the threshold from 67-percent to 55-percent – costing the state’s taxpayers millions of dollars.

Since I had to put up with the eerie music and continuous presentation during my stay, I decided to record the TV channel for your HOGUE NEWS viewing.        

The voice at the very end of the recording is my wife’s.

She was getting ready for our trip to a reception and was listening to my recording of the production (I had the volume a tad bit high). Even she was surprised to hear of Steve Poizner’s past pontifications and speechifying.

My room was attacked by Demon Sheep.

On Friday night, after a long day in Santa Clara, I retired to my hotel room to call it a day.

As my head it the pillow there was some laughter in the hallway outside of my door. Then the ever present slide of materials under the door; for those who attend convention styled events you come to understand that your room number is your mailbox address.

You tell yourself to expect to have mountain of morning junk mail forced under your door.

After clearing away numerous fliers, hand bills and printed pages I was startled … a demon sheep showed up.

A group called Fiscal Conservatives in Name Only decided that a full page poster featuring Tom Campbell morphing into a ‘red eyed’ Demon Sheep would grab attention and spark conversation.

It certainly did in my room; something you don’t want to see under your door in the middle of the night.

Speaking of Carly Fiorina; she knows how to arrive in style.

Carly Fiorina arrived at 10AM on Saturday with a throng of volunteers (college Republicans, campaign staff and a few convention delegates) waving signs, wearing the Carly-red t-shirts and chanting for their favorite anti-Boxer CEO. Here is a view of Fiorina’s arrival at the Santa Clara Hyatt.

She makes very sure to shake “every one’s” hands as she heads for the front doors and the hotel lobby:

Inside, more red shirts and Carly fans, voters and volunteers as the conference turned from the gubernatorial focus to the three-headed race for the U.S. Senate nomination between Carly, Chuck DeVore and Tom Campbell.

Tom Campbell tried his luck at explaining Sami Al-Arian’s letter; one more time.

The Progressive Republican apologized Friday for defending Al-Arian in early 2002. At a news conference held at the very start of the weekend, Campbell said he had made a mistake in protesting the dismissal of Al-Arian from the University of South Florida.

“That was an error, and I deeply regret it,” Campbell said, “I saw only the material relevant to the question of whether he was misrepresenting himself as speaking on behalf of that university. I did not see other things he had said but I should have and I regret the error.”

Campbell also mentioned that he error-ed in not returning  Al-Arian’s political contribution as well.

You think?