Archive for the ‘Carly Fiorina’ Category

Last night, Donald Trump got into a Twitter fight with Carly Fiorina, which was chronicled in this CNN article. Mrs. Fiorina got under Mr. Trump’s thin skin by saying “Donald, sorry, I’ve got to interrupt again. You would know something about pathological,” Fiorina said in a Facebook post. “How was that meeting with Putin?” It didn’t take long for Trump to say “I only said I was on @60Minutes four weeks ago with Putin—never said I was in Green Room. Separate pieces—great ratings!”

According to the transcript from the Fox Business GOP Debate, Trump isn’t telling the whole truth about what he said. The transcript clearly shows that Mr. Trump said “I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes, we were stable mates, and we did very well that night.”

That’s an interesting way of talking about things. Charlie Rose flew to Moscow earlier in the week to interview Putin. It’d be interesting to hear Mr. Trump explain how he got to know Mr. Putin without meeting him. Better yet, I’d love hearing Mr. Trump explain how he and Mr. Putin were stable mates while Putin was being interviewed in Moscow and Trump was sitting in Trump Towers.

To be fair, Trump is right that they both did well that night in terms of TV ratings. In fact, I’ll stipulate that that fact is indisputable.

Donald Trump has defied political gravity this entire summer. No matter what offensive thing he said, no matter who he offended, Mr. Trump’s poll numbers stayed high or, sometimes, increased. Based on this NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll, that incredible run appears to have ended in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

This poll doesn’t appear to show that Mr. Trump’s numbers have leveled off. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump’s numbers have dropped — significantly. Iowa’s results highlight this perfectly. In this month’s poll, Mr. Trump leads with 24%, followed by Dr. Ben Carson with 19%, Carly Fiorina with 8%, Jeb Bush with 7%, with Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal getting 6% each. That’s a sharp drop-off from September’s poll, which had Mr. Trump leading with 29%, Dr. Carson with 22%, Jeb Bush with 6% and Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul with 5% each.

It doesn’t get better for Mr. Trump in New Hampshire:

It isn’t coincidence that Trump got exposed at the last debate as not having much of a command of the issues, especially compared with Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Put differently, Mr. Trump is failing the ‘commander-in-chief test’.

In interviews afterwards, Mr. Trump said he didn’t want to say what, specifically, he’d do in the Middle East because he wanted Putin and Assad to worry what he’d do. It sounded to many like he was dodging the question because he didn’t have a plan.

Mrs. Fiorina in particular didn’t have a problem telegraphing her strategy. In Mrs. Fiorina’s case, she wanted Putin to know what things she’d do to Russia if she became president.

This Q-Poll from Quinnipiac University shows Donald Trump as its biggest loser in the sense that he loses to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden (who isn’t even in the race) and Socialist Bernie Sanders.

According to the Q-Poll, Hillary “gets 45 percent to Trump’s 43 percent.” Meanwhile, Vice President Biden defeats “Trump 51 – 40 percent.” Finally, Bernie Sanders “tops Trump 47 – 42 percent.” That isn’t good news for Trump. Hillary loses to Carly Fiorina 44% to 43%, 44% to 42% to Jeb Bush and 49% to 42$ to Ben Carson. Meanwhile, “Biden gets 46 percent to 43 percent for Fiorina and beats Bush 46 – 41 percent and Trump 51 – 40 percent. Biden and Carson are tied 45 – 45 percent.” Finally, “Sanders gets 43 percent to Fiorina’s 44 percent and ties Bush 44 – 44 percent. Sanders trails Carson 49 – 39 percent.”

Trump’s polling trajectory is plateauing, too:

The latest national Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday provided some fuel to wishful rivals. Trump still leads among registered Republican voters with 25 percent, statistically unchanged from last month’s Quinnipiac survey that put him at 28 percent. Yet it’s the second major national poll this week showing a slight decrease from last month, Trump experienced an 8-point drop in the CNN/ORC survey released Sunday. (A Fox poll released Wednesday evening also showed Trump with relatively stalled momentum, and a Bloomberg survey of the GOP field showed Trump in a holding pattern at 21 percent).

The question that hasn’t been answered is whether Trump’s floor of support is his ceiling. That’s unknowable at this point. What isn’t unknowable, though, is whether others are gaining ground. Fiorina, Rubio and Carson definitely are gaining on Trump. Here’s Chris Stirewalt’s observation on that:

You already know about one of the main areas of agreement in the polls: Carly Fiorina, Sen. Marco Rubio and Ben Carson all emerged stronger from last week’s contest.

Trump loves bragging about leading this primary or that. What’s odd is that the media hasn’t asked him why his GOP rivals fare significantly better than him in the general election match-ups. Fiorina and Rubio are significantly stronger candidates against Hillary than Trump is.

If the goal is to elect a conservative as president, Trump isn’t your guy. He’s defeated by the Democrats’ ‘Big Three’ in fairly convincing fashion. It’s too early for GOP candidates to tout the electability issue but there will come a point when Fiorina and Rubio will start playing that card. Their argument will essentially be ‘Don’t waste your vote supporting a guy who can’t beat Hillary.’ It wouldn’t be surprising if that argument isn’t a powerful argument in mid-January.

It’s fitting that Esther Goldberg’s post proclaims Goldberg’s devotion to Donald Trump. It’s fitting because Ms. Goldberg’s post is like Trump — mostly ad hominem attacks. It’s telling that the post is titled “Why I don’t like Carly Fiorina.” That’s fair enough. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.

It didn’t take Ms. Goldberg long to start with the ad hominem attacks. She started by criticizing Mrs. Fiorina, saying that Mrs. Fiorina turned her off “when she referred to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei as the ‘Supreme Leader’ during the second debate”, arguing that there’s “something incongruous about anyone, especially the leader of the free world, addressing a brutal dictator who wants to take us all back to the 7th century as ‘Supreme Leader’.”

After saying that Fiorina wouldn’t meet with Putin, Ms. Goldberg said that “Trump believes that if you are respected as a leader you have an advantage. And unlike Obama, he’d be respected.” My first question is simple. Why Trump would be respected? His understanding of the U.S.-Russian relationship is virtually nonexistent. Trump said in a debate that he’d bone up on foreign policy if he became president.

Mrs. Fiorina, like Sen. Rubio, understands the subtleties and details of the U.S.-Russian relationship. She understands, as does Sen. Rubio, that Putin isn’t impressed with having a chat. Putin won’t be impressed until there’s a show of force. Mr. Trump would likely be more forceful than Obama, though that isn’t a high bar to step over.

Mrs. Fiorina said that she’d rebuild the Sixth Fleet, put additional soldiers in Germany, conduct aggressive military exercises with the Baltic States and re-arm Poland with a missile defense system. That’s the blueprint President Reagan used in toppling the former Soviet Union.

Foreign policy realists criticized President Reagan for not meeting with the Soviet Union during his first term in office. President Reagan’s strategy was to challenge the Soviet Union wherever they could to impress on them the fact that they could (and would) checkmate Gorbachev’s expansionist policies wherever they were tried.

By acting first and talking later, Fiorina is sending the same signal to Putin that President Reagan sent to the Soviets. If given the choice between following President Reagan’s blueprint or trusting in Trump’s negotiating skills, I’ll pick President Reagan’s blueprint every time.

Carly Fiorina’s speech tonight has the potential to be a tide-shifting event. During the speech, she’ll lay out a plan to redefine feminism in more conservative terms:

In a call with supporters previewing her speech on the state of women in America tonight at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carly Fiorina said, “It is important to have this conversation as conservatives. It is important to have this conversation as Republicans.” She invited her followers to acknowledge, yes, women’s potential is still being underutilized. In the S&P 500, she said, only 23 chief executives are women; fewer than the number of CEOs named John. But rather than buy into the liberals’ terms of the debate, feminism means supporting abortion on demand, feminists support a big welfare state, she declared, “We need to redefine feminism. We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism.’” Rather, she says a feminist is anyone who chooses the life she lives.

This is why it’s vitally important to have Carly on the debate stage. Whether she wins the nomination or not, her hanging around as one of the finalists has the potential to positively change the GOP’s perspective for a generation. Jennifer Rubin’s post offers a stunning contrast between Ms. Fiorina and Mrs. Clinton:

Fiorina also offers the experience of someone who, as she likes to remind her audiences, went from secretary to CEO. (Clinton went from Yale Law School to the governor’s mansion and Rose Law Firm and then to the White House.)

At times, Hillary has played the victim card. At other times, she’s ridden her husband’s coattails. She got hired at the Rose Law Firm because her husband was governor of Arkansas at the time.

Carly Fiorina didn’t get hired to any of her positions because she’s the wife of a famous man. She didn’t work her way up the corporate ladder because of cronyism or nepotism. She became the CEO of HP because she earned it without anyone’s help.

Let’s be blunt. If Hillary’s last name was Schneider or Olson, she wouldn’t be taken seriously, especially considering all of her mistakes and her lack of accomplishments. This video does a devastating job of highlighting Hillary’s lack of accomplishments:

The more I watch her, the more impressed with Ms. Fiorina.