Republican candidates in need of new material?

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It may be a new and unusual campaign strategy, or maybe she’s trying to save money, but Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor has gotten into the habit of borrowing material from her Republican primary opponent Steve Poizner’s campaign commercials and putting them into her own (albeit to criticize him).

Recently, Whitman aired a clip from one of Poizner’s ads that showed an unflattering picture of her sandwiched by images of President Obama. In her newest ad, released Wednesday (below), Whitman includes images from another Poizner commercial, which used a car driving over a cliff as a metaphor for California.

Poizner is also falling into a pattern with his ads; his entails the repeated use of Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay) as a surrogate to attack Whitman and compare her to a moderate Republican, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a kind of scary moment from the one below, also released Wednesday, Schwarzenegger’s face morphs into Whitman’s. Clearly Poizner sees McClintock as more popular among conservative Republican primary voters than he is; the congressman would probably disappear in the general election, in the event that Poizner, who badly trails Whitman in polls, is able to get there. -- Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento