Carly Fiorina’s recent criticism of Hillary for playing the race card may have been ill-advised. 

At an Iowa campaign event on 17 October, 2015, Republican Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina is quoted as predicting that “…Mrs. Clinton is going to play that gender card all day long. It is the rationale for her candidacy."

That’s a reasonable prediction based on Clinton’s past behaviors.

But it’s a criticism that Fiorina may have to own herself.

It’s best not to throw stones, even if you have only a small glass window in your house.  And when it comes to playing the gender card, Fiorina has installed one. 

Not as overtly as Clinton, but she, too, has played the gender card.  

After the first GOP Presidential candidates’ debate hosted by FOX, Donald Trump’s criticism of Megyn Kelly’s line of questioning provoked Fiorina’s tweet defense of Kelly.

It’s hard not to view her comments as a gender-based response to Trump, regardless of the propriety of his comments concerning Kelly’s questioning. 

Why go there at all? What’s to be gained, except to further provoke Trump, which may have been the objective?  After all, Megyn Kelly hardly needs defending. 

Because Trump is a documented counterpuncher, his subsequent comment about Fiorina’s face predictably teed up the Jake Tapper question in the second debate that gave her the opportunity to say, “‘I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,’ Fiorina said without any further elaboration, eliciting cheers from the audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.” 

What the crowd cheered was a pithy retort by a female candidate to a jab by a male candidate in an adolescent exchange suitable for a middle school playground. 

Had she said, “Oh, that’s just Donald being Donald,” she would have received less applause – from a largely GOP establishment crowd not keen on Trump in the first place – but she would have played an adult card, rather than a gender card.