Meg Whitman, the fourth richest woman in California, is now also the Republican nominee for governor and conservative pundits like David Frum and Fred Barnes are already talking about the White House. They're probably getting ahead of themselves.
Oh, she's vain enough, and stupid and stubborn enough, and hollow inside; she just doesn't have the money.
To get the nomination yesterday, Whitman spent $81 million -- $71 million out of the pockets of her own haunting mom-khakis. She got 1,101,074 votes. That's $73.56 a vote. And that's just the primary.
Now she has to win in November.
Over the last five California gubernatorial elections, the winning candidate has won with 52%, or about 4,446,480 votes. At $73.56 a vote, Meg Whitman will have to spend $327,083,069.
That's $100 million more than John McCain spent running for president in 2008. It's $58 million more than George W. Bush spent, running in 2004.
It's more money than any Republican has ever spent running for anything.
Whitman's a billionaire, so she has the $327 mil. She said she was willing to spend $150 million before she even started. But that's not White House money, when you're a Republican and it costs you $73 just to get a Republican to vote for you, and you're basically running unopposed.
Barack Obama won the last presidential election with 69,456,897 votes, or about 53% of the vote. So Meg Whitman could be president - anything could happen - but at her burn rate her campaign would cost 5.1 billion dollars.