There are Silicon Valley Republicans, who want simply to keep the government out of the internet and their capital gains, and then there is Meg Whitman. The eBay CEO was named yesterday as chief California fundraiser for the leading conservative candidate for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney. But the Massachussetts Governor, a religious Mormon who has fought the state's liberal courts on gay marriage, isn't the only hardcore Republican with Whitman's blessing. The eBay boss, a stolid mom-like presence at the online auction company, has also supported a leading campaigner against immigrants, a fierce critic of the "theory" of evolution, and a candidate with a liking for racial epithets.
In 2002, Whitman, a former Procter & Gamble executive whose job as CEO of the hugely profitable online auction house has made her a billionaire, spread her political largesse among candidates of both parties. In the most recent election year, even as voters turned against Republicans, Whitman swung right. Here's a list of candidates she supported in 2006.
Jim Sensenbrenner introduced the Patriot Act to the House of Representatives, and walked out of a House Judiciary Committee meeting when Democrats had the temerity to question human-rights abuses at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The Congressman, from Wisconsin, supports criminal prosecution of broadcasters who violate decency standards. He was a leading supporter in the House of measures proposed last year to further strengthen the rights of copyright owners. And he was the main House sponsor of the 2005 bill providing additional criminal penalties for aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
Charles Pickering, son of the judicial hero of the anti-abortion movement, is of the same mould. The Congressman from Mississippi is commonly rated one of the most conservative members of the House. His most recent claim to fame: a speech railing against the theory of evolution, at the Pentecostalist revival meeting captured, immortally, in Ali G's movie, Borat.
George Allen's Senate seat was Virginia, traditionally one of the most Republican states in the union. But an opposition operative of Indian origin, spying at a rally, made Allen lose his temper. The Senator famously called him a macaca, a slur meaning "monkey" in North Africa, where his mother grew up. That gave credibility to claims by college contemporaries that he wore a Confederate pin and called black people nigger, and not in a nice way.
