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PrintJuly 14, 2010
Five Facts About Carly Fiorina
The Democratic National Committee is circulating an e-mail message with the subject Five things to know about Carly Fiorina. Could there be any doubt as to how favorable these facts would be to Ms. Fiorina? Probably not very much, given that the Washington Post reported last week that the Democrats are digging even harder for dirt on Republicans. Still, in the interest of fairness, let's have a look.
The letter correctly identifies Carly Fiorina as the Republican candidate for United States Senate. It does not mention against whom Ms. Fiorina is running. A quick search revealed that it is one Senator Barbara Boxer. It's important to call Senator Boxer by her title, as revealed in this YouTube video.
Each of the five facts about Carly Fiorina include a link to Tweet or Share on Facebook, whatever that means.
Fact 1
Named as one of Conde Nast Portfolio's "20 Worst American CEOs of All Time," she laid off more than 30,000 workers, shipped jobs to China, and was responsible for a 52-percent drop in HP's stock price.
Condé Nast is a large publishing company and, no doubt, publishes a lot of opinions. Some about golf, some about fashion, and so forth. Barbara Boxer does not appear on the Worst CEO list. Nor does she appear on the Best CEO list. It seems that Barbara Boxer has never been a CEO. So, does she appear on the Worst Senator list? There doesn't seem to be one, but there is a website dedicated to how awful she has been as a senator.
So what sort of jobs has Senator Boxer held? Her resumé looks something like this
Student
Housewife
Peace Activist
Environmental Activist
United States Senator
This pattern is repeating with alarming frequency of late.
Fact 2
Endorsed by Sarah Palin, Fiorina is against a woman's right to choose, wants to repeal health care reform, and supports the extremist Arizona immigration law.
This may be two or three facts, so to keep it easy let's disregard that she has been endorsed by another Republican. To say that she is against a woman's right to choose is misleading. At its simplest this would mean that she opposes abortion on demand, like the majority of Americans according to PollingReport.com. But, what's the point? Isn't that settled law?
As far as Arizona's SB 1070, the controversial law defining how Arizona police officers can assist federal officers to enforce immigration laws, most Americans support that too according to The Economist.
Fact 3
She defended HP's practice of shipping jobs offshore by calling it "right-shoring," and said in a 2004 speech that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
Is the problem with this that she implied that there is a God who dispenses rights? Jobs go to those who compete best to fill them. The only constituency who may disagree with this are union members and government employees.
Fact 4
She denies that climate change is a serious national issue, referring to it mockingly as "the weather."
This also seems to be the trend among Americans according to CNN. Though still hoping for AGW, the Brits are slipping into the dubious category according to Reuters. Anyone who has spent any time in Britain can understand why those poor people would want something to change.
Fact 5
She expects Californians to turn out for her on Election Day, but she hasn't turned out herself: Since 2000, she only voted in just eight out of 23 elections -- skipping the 2000 and 2004 Presidential primaries.
Senator Boxer beats Ms. Fiorina here, missing only 8 votes in the current session of Congress according to the Washington Post for a 98.7% participation rate. Bravo! Of course, she was voting with the Democrats 96.1% of the time, so maybe this has not been such a good thing. Besides, it's her job to vote; should we give her a medal? As to missing the 2000 presidential primary, the Republicans were faced with the choice of John McCain, Alan Keyes, Orrin Hatch, Steve Forbes and George W. Bush., plus a few that dropped out before the primaries started The choice was made before California Republicans had a chance to vote. Bush took nearly twice the votes of the other candidates combined. In the 2004 primaries Bush was running for re-election and had no real opposition for the nomination.
Expect more of this. Sometimes the claims may have some merit, but the issue is not whether the Republican is a flawed human being, but whether they better represent your interests than the alternative. In the case of this exposé, close inspection shows that Ms. Fiorina is more in step with most Americans than Senator Boxer as witness the polls cited.
By way of disclosure, I did not support Ms. Fiorina in the primary. I could not have even if I wanted to since California had a closed primary this year and I'm not a Republican.
Tom Bruner usually writes about economics and economic policy.
