Fiorina’s lack of traction
Richard Saunders asks why Carly Fiorina has failed to catch on:
Carly seems to me to be the only candidate who has given any thought as to what the next President should DO, beyond repealing all of Onederboy’s executive actions and Obamacare.
I can’t figure out why she hasn’t gotten more traction (although she is repeating her catch phrases too often ”“ she needs a little variation in phraseology).
Early on, when I was first being exposed to Fiorina in this campaign, I was very impressed. This was echoed in the public response to her first debate. People had been unfamiliar with her at the outset, but once they saw her in the undercard, and then more people watched her in the second debate after she was promoted to first string, they liked her and her numbers soared. Then the numbers started to sink, and now they are low enough that I think she’s out of contention. What happened?
I think it was a combination of things. She is one of three people in the race who haven’t got experience in political office, and she was the least well-known of the three prior to running. Therefore, because people didn’t have a backlog of impressions about her, smear campaigns have had greater force because they fill in the blanks. When she began to rise, for instance, and people were just getting to know her, I noticed a veritable flood of commenters arriving on blog after blog after blog spouting the same talking points over and over. It was clearly some sort of organized effort, although by exactly whom I don’t know.
The two points they kept making were that (a) she was a disaster at Hewlett-Packard, and (b) she delivered a speech a couple of weeks after 9/11 where she talked about Islams’ Golden Age, ergo she is pro-Muslim and would be soft on terrorists.
I wrote about each issue several times. No need to go back to them at the moment, because right now I’m not arguing on the merits, but talking about the process of her falling support. Suffice to say that I think neither claim was correct, and there’s plenty of evidence for what I thought, but because people were unfamiliar with her previously (and because there were so many alternative candidates to support) it was easy for a lot of newly-acquired Carly supporters to say, “Oh, well, if she did that then I don’t like her anymore; I’ll just support x, y, or z instead.”
Carly didn’t have much money to put out a blitz campaign to fight it all. What’s more, she was vulnerable on her H-P record and had made enemies, as most CEOs in hard times do. Like Romney with Romneycare (another issue I discussed on this blog quite thoroughly at the time), although there were explanations that put her in a very good light, it was easy to criticize her and make the critiques stick, especially in the absence of deep and detailed knowledge of the problems each person had faced and the limitations that were inherent in the situations.
I also think that, even though Fiorina seemed to maintain her equanimity during the campaign, something got under her skin ever-so-slightly. She kept her clarity and her ability to get to the heart of the matter, rhetorically speaking, but she made a decision to be very very solemn during the debates. This decision was not a good one; it made her seem hard and humorless. I’ve seen her in person, and she is definitely neither—in fact, she’s feminine and warm and funny. But during the debates, those qualities were muted or absent in her. That did not help her at all, IMHO.
Lastly, as Richard Saunders has pointed out, there is a certain repetitive quality to some of her sound bites. This is true of all the candidates, but I think it’s a bit more true of her than of the others. I’m not sure why she does it, because she can certainly think on her feet and speak very well extemporaneously, but my guess is that she may still believe most people don’t know her and haven’t heard her say these things before and so they bear repeating.
I didn’t watch the undercard debate last night, but I hear that she shone. Will it propel her upward again? Perhaps. But as I said, I don’t think she will break through to become a contender.
Maybe too late to listen to me, but she needed to take bold positions on matters of substance. OPEC oil tariff. Aggressive on Iran “deal.” Green freeze. Attack the AGW scam-hoax.
As John Podhoretz wrote, “Make the news. Be the news.”
Fiorina also got tagged as being a GOP insider instead of the outsider she claimed to be.
I wish it weren’t true, but I think there is more general prejudice towards women regarding the Presidency than any other identifying characteristic. I think this is mostly sub-conscious (and unintended), but many people react differently to a woman saying something than if a man says the same thing.
Carly Fiorina is an outstanding candidate. If she were a male I think she’d be in the lead.
PatD:
As with most of the attacks on Fiorina, that was sophistry, too. She never said she had nothing to do with politics or government, ever. She was an outsider compared to someone like Bush or the other office-holders. She was attacked for many other things, too, most of them untrue. I wasn’t meaning to offer an inclusive list in this post, merely the most important ones that I saw over and over and over, in a sudden and veritable flood right after her numbers began to rise.
I liked her too, until I found out she worked for McCain’s campaign. That forced me to question her words a little more. Also, she is a bit of an unknown. Her business background is admirable, but her HP stuff weighed her down. I
She is great at coming up with one liners. However, she repeats herself a lot, and now that schtick is getting to me.
K-E:
I would remind you that McCain was the Republican nominee in 2008 against Obama. Would you rather she had sat idly by and let Obama win?
I can’t find anything directly on this point, but I am pretty sure she only worked for McCain after he had been nominated. I keep reading that she worked for his presidential campaign; nothing about his campaign for the nomination.
I still like her a lot. She is feminine in the the tough love Mom mode– she could sit the country down and give it a good talking to. She’s the outsider with more principles than Trump and less anger, but unfortunately people seem to want it the other way around.
Rufus: ditto. For a women there is a fine line between being seriously assertive/aggressive enough and being labeled shrewish or dour. When speaking passionately, a lack of deep vocal register can make you sound shreiky or squeaky. We don’t even need to go into the whole what is she wearing or what did she do to her hair thing (although Carly doesn’t have this issue).
While very regrettable, I hope these attitudes work regarding Hillary. The Republicans will need all the help they can get.
@Neo-neocon:
I was citing a blogger who has some influence with grass root conservatives. He/she may not have coined the GOPe acronym but they certainly popularised it as a derogatory term for the GOP establishment. That speaks to a certain amount of influence in conservative circles. By categorizing Fiorina as part of the GOPe, they could have turned some people away from her.
I’m not saying she is part of the GOPe. I’m just pointing out that other people said she is, and that may have been a factor in a race where the outsiders are winning.
PatD:
I am in complete agreement. That was indeed a big part of the attack on Fiorina. I saw more of the other two arguments, but you are absolutely correct that that was another one that was used a lot.
“…a veritable flood of commenters arriving on blog after blog after blog spouting the same talking points over and over. It was clearly some sort of organized effort, although by exactly whom I don’t know.”
As I’ve mentioned here before, the same thing happened to Breitbart since Trump entered the race and it’s not about why we should vote for Trump, just sloganeering and really vitriolic attacks against whoever is giving him the most competition. All of the commenters are new to the site, very few appear to be conservative, and many have private disqus profiles with an insane number of comments and outrageous upvote totals, often hundreds to one.
I have been able to trace a few of their comments to infowars (Alex Jones conspiracy nut), conservativetreehouse (never heard of it), WND, gaming, music, entertainment and social sites I’ve never heard of either.
First it was Carson they attacked, now it’s Cruz they’re after. They use every leftwing talking point, they’re hot on the “birther” issue now, and go after his wife, and the semi-disclosed personal loan he got against his non-liquid assets because it was from Goldman-Sachs.
The comments of theirs I traced to other non-political sites seemed to me to indicate they were younger people, possibly attracted to his celebrity status. They evidently spend a lot of time on the internet, but they don’t know anything about politics or the law, just spout talking points they regurgitate from the Democrats or each other.
It’s an invasion, an infection/infestation that’s taken over the comments section and crowding out the regulars. They really don’t seem to care that they’re alienating Cruz supporters, and he won all their online polls at Breitbart before these…creatures…showed up.
It also appears organized. I know the Democrats have been doing this sort of online organizing for a long time already. It’s like these people want Trump to win the primary, and now they’re after the one the left fears the most because he is a Constitutional conservative, could crush any Democrat in a one-on-one debate, and appears to have no significant skeletons in his closet.
Trump, on the other hand, has a full cemetery in his, all of it on YouTube, C-Span and network archives.
Many good points. I think especially telling is her lack of a track record of success, especially in business. Her lack of a political resume is unimportant given Trump’s support.
Which leads to the other factor, the republican candidates that are doing well are primarily Trump and Cruz (I discount Rubio’s chances). Trump has spoken out unequivocally on the primary public concerns and Cruz has a long conservative track record, making his conservatism fairly unimpeachable.
That’s what the public wants and Carly simply hasn’t spoken firmly enough (using sound bites) to these issues, and her track record is impeachable.
First, it is critical to get the public’s attention through short, pithy, declarative soundbites, then issue position papers that explain and clarify.
geokstr, I think it was a similar deluge from Trumpbots that caused Ace of Spades to institute a strict commenter blocker policy. I don’t frequent a lot of sites, but the ones I do (like this one) feature Trump backers who were regular commenters prior to the primary.
geokstr,
I second your comments on Breitbart. I’ve stopped visiting the donald show until the zombies leave. Hopefully that will be after super Tuesday.
Walker/Fiorina was my early dream ticket. Then it became Fiorina/Cruz. Now its Cruz/Fiorina. Perhaps third time will be the charm.
geokstr:
I noticed that group long ago, since the beginning of Trump’s candidacy. I noticed them particularly at Breitbart, where they completely dominated. There also used to be a lot of them at Hot Air; don’t know if that’s still true.
Many started to come here, but I banned some of them and argued with others, and perhaps they got tired and went away. They could definitely return. The commenters who remain here who are pro-Trump are mostly regulars who make substantive arguments.
I have long thought that among the Trump-warriors are many people on the left, and that they are using Trump as a tool to take out the contenders who are actually conservative. I don’t know if they’re all on the left, or just some on the left and most on the right using leftist techniques. The way they argue is right out of the left’s playbook, however (as eric would say, the activist playbook—but they write in the style of leftist activists nevertheless).
I have no idea if Trump encourages them or pays them or what, or just winks at them.
1. I share parker’s sentiments.
2. Cornhead is correct.
3. All three of the “undercard” participants (Huckabee, Fiorina and Santorum) did very well last night.
I’m not sure why she does it, because she can certainly think on her feet and speak very well extemporaneously, but my guess is that she may still believe most people don’t know her and haven’t heard her say these things before and so they bear repeating.
She would have gotten the same “Republican inside DC coaching” that Sarah Palin got.
Meaning, it’s poison in the wine. Don’t take it. But they do. Then they suffer. Because it’s poison from DC.
The way they argue is right out of the left’s playbook, however (as eric would say, the activist playbook–but they write in the style of leftist activists nevertheless).
I have no idea if Trump encourages them or pays them or what, or just winks at them.
They’re part of the Third Way or what people call Alternative Right. Culturally, they are still stuck on stupid, but ideologically, they are leaving the Leftist alliance itself.
The mechanics are rather complicated, as is the history. It was not something I predicted before 2012, but the precursors were there.
Ymarsakar:
My point is that I believe that of them are not just imitating the left in terms of tactics, but they ARE leftists who would like Trump to be the nominee because they think he would lose.
I have no idea what percentage come under that description, however. Could be very small or rather large or anything in-between.
Carly is a fine, fine and extremely able person. She deserves a Cabinet job. As does Santorum.
A little morality will be welcome.
I loved Carly’s sign-off for the night — “You should vote for me because you want to see me debate Hilary — you’d PAY to see me debate Hilary.” (Not verbatim.) Very true. I would, and so would a lot of others. I agree with Parker, the best she can hope for is the Veep spot, and even if she gets it, she won’t be debating Hillary. Oh, well, traditionally, the Veep candidate is the attack dog and she’ll at least have to opportunity to go after the Dowager Empress (as Bill Whittle called her) with hammer and tongs.
Personally, the speech Carly Fiorina made praising Islam after 911 did a great deal to lessen my initial enthusiasm for her. I didn’t write her off, but I decided to watch and wait to see how she responded to the criticism.
For her critics to bring that speech up was perfectly legitimate and those questioning her deserved an answer. In vetting a candidate people have the right to study the persons record and to ask them to explain things which seem questionable. Unfortunately, she was either unaware of the criticism of that speech or she didn’t take the criticism seriously enough to respond to it. To this day, if she has ever responded specifically to the questions about that speech, I’m unaware of it. Letting something like that fester is not good politics. I put the blame on her shoulders for not addressing the question head on rather than on the people who raised the questions.
Now that Trump has taken the lead in fighting massive immigration of unvetted Muslims from terrorist hotbeds, Carly has made some statements which seem to confirm that she gets it and that she agrees with Trump. In other words, she probably has learned that Islam is not such an awesome religion after all. Unfortunately for her, because Trump is out in front on the issue and is taking all the criticism without flinching, her response to the issue appears weak in comparison.
In my opinion her response to unvetted Syrian immigration is much stronger than Jeb Bush’s response but she seems to be moving in Trump’s shadow. He is the one who has initiated the daring initiative with his statement that we should cut off Muslim immigration at least temporarily until we know that it is safe. His determination to stand by that statement even after almost universal denunciation really sets him apart.
I’m sure there are other issues also, perhaps she is just not that charismatic. Overall her grasp of the issues seems to be good and she comes across well.
I’ve always contended that Fiorina was a Queen Bee — in the Wareham sense — and that she’s running to be Vice President.
She doesn’t have the CV to head the ticket.
&&&&&&&&&
I like Trump and how he’s shifted the Overton window.
But, it’s plain as blue sky that HRC was delighted with the prospect of running against Donald.
When Ted rose to the top — her key lieutenants raced to the microphone to rally the masses.
1) Send more money…
2) Begin a swarm attack against the REAL threat: Ted Cruz.
&&&&&&&
HRC is apparently feeling the Bern.
Her numbers in Iowa have taken a beating — and a drubbing in New Hampshire is now a real possibility.
Such drubbings — in the past — have caused many Democrat shifts.
RFK jumped in. (1968)
Truman bowed out (1952)
LBJ bowed out (1968)
WORSE for HRC: 13 Hours.
Coupled to the fact that 2016 will be an EPIC financial year — Bear Market wise.
1) EVERY sovereign wealth fund is now in reverse gear.
For state reasons — they will continue to liquidate blue chip stocks — across the board.
2) Red China is on the cusp of a meltdown and revolution.
Machiavelli’s dictum — don’t make your citizens poorer — must ring loud.
Barry was elected because the markets broke up.
The GOP will take the presidency because Barry broke up Pax Americana — and the world economy.
Dennis:
Actually, that Carly Fiorina post-9/11 speech was easy to explain, and those who said it meant she was in some way soft on terrorism were making a false assertion. I discussed the speech on this blog many many times, for example here, here, here, and here.
Nor is Fiorina’s hard line on Islamic terrorism new.
Remember back when Donald Trump was saying the following about the attack on Pam Geller?:
In contrast, Fiorina refused to criticize Geller, even when pressed, and continued to defend her freedom of speech:
Well, its so irresponsible of Fiorina to stand up for the 1st against jihad unless she is holding a burning copy of the koran that has been dipped in bacon grease. trump is a brain virus that attacks the rationality of those infected.
Personally, I would be enthusiastic about a national burn a koran smeared with lard day followed by a national day encouraging cartoons of the prophet. Fitting days would be July 5 and 6th.
Neo brings up the reason we should all support Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina rather than Trump. While Trump has done us all a big favor by breaking the left’s speech codes, we really don’t know what are his core beliefs. In this respect Trump is very much like Obama who was a palette on which people would project their own beliefs and attribute them to him. Could we say that Trump is the Republican version of Obama?
Carly’s response was obviously superior to Trump’s in the case of Pamella Geller. In my opinion, Carly’s problem isn’t necessarily that she is still wrong on the issue of Islam but that she was slow to respond to the issue immediately when it came up. Perhaps she didn’t realize what was being said about her. In that case she is the victim of bad luck. If she did realize it and didn’t respond then she bungled the situation. In either case she allowed Trump to seize the Islamist issue for his own.
Even in the interview that Neo has presented in which Carly stands strong she was somewhat inept in her response. Comparing Pamela Geller to White supremacists is clumsy at best. That’s the kind of political mistake which if repeated over time can damage a politician.
geokstr Says:
January 15th, 2016 at 4:51 pm
“…a veritable flood of commenters arriving on blog after blog after blog spouting the same talking points over and over. It was clearly some sort of organized effort, although by exactly whom I don’t know.”
* * *
Interesting research. I have seen the same flood of “concerned citizens” on Hot Air constantly repeating the same round of criticisms without responding to any questions, and bringing back debunked statements over and over again.
It’s one of the curses that go along with the blessings of alternative news sites.
“… very much like Obama.. ”
Indeed, very much like bho. Just what we need in the Oval Office as a republic crashes and burns into the rule of a mob lead by the nose by msm celebrities.
Dennis:
I think two things were going on. The first is that Carly’s campaign was originally (and probably still is) pretty low-budget. She may not have enough money in the coffers to hire tons of researchers to see what’s being said about her. So perhaps she didn’t understand the extent of the rumors about her 9/11 speech, and didn’t realize how much she needed to redress it. If not, that’s a failing of her campaign organization.
As for the white supremacists, I think that was a case of her not following up on the entire thought because she got sidetracked by the interviewer’s questions. Fiorina was going in a civil liberties direction. I am almost positive she was about to explicitly refer to the history of the Skokie case. If you’re not familiar with it, see this.
Closely related to the HP issue, I think she was a victim of an anti-affirmative action backlash. She played upon her gender as a plus, but I think the kind of people who are sick of PC saw that as pandering. That opened the door mentally to a critique of her HP years seen through that lens.
Unfortunately for Carly, there was enough confusion to allow people to come to whatever conclusion they wanted. It was also not helpful to have been associated with McCain.
All of the commenters are new to the site, very few appear to be conservative, and many have private disqus profiles with an insane number of comments and outrageous upvote totals, often hundreds to one.
geokster–
There’s an EXCELLENT possibility that these folks are organized and run by the Left: Think about it. Very few conservatives, and they take out Carson and then Cruz, AND they make Trump look bad, all at the same time.
Rush Limbaugh had a detective agency (IIRC) do some sleuthing to find out from whence came the “thousands” of protests and complaints to his sponsors for advertising on “That Horrible Nasty Conservative’s Show!!!”
And guess what? It turned out that these “thousands” of complaints, emails, etc. were generated by ~ twelve (12) people, the “Stop Rush” group, using sophisticated computer algorithms. To try to force him off the air by nuking his ad revenue.
Per esempio:
Here he is on the “StopRush” gang: he mentions it frequently (you can search Limbaugh’s archives on his site using the keyword “algorithm”).
I would view these things with a Very Skeptical Eye, especially if most aren’t from conservatives, and doubly especially if they have an insane number of “upvotes.” Regardless of what you think of Trump, the Leftists hate his guts and would never support him — they’re all here in NYC screeching that he’s Hitler[!!!] reborn.
I’d need hard evidence before I believed all this was Trump’s doing. Or the work of any non-Leftist.
Seriously, if New York City is any barometer, the Lefties hate Trump and Cruz with a purple, cross-eyed passion, and are doing everything they can to smear, discredit, and character-assassinate both men.
As is their wont.
Ole Hillary is looking in the rear-view mirror — and not seeing Bernie Sanders any more. And the side-view mirror is warning her that “objects in this mirror are closer than they appear!”
Do you all think The Bern can overtake her? Again, using my own personal collection of NYC liberal birdbrains (most of my friends, likeable but political idiots), they’re ALL on the Bernie Bandwagon. Facebook and conversations over dinner: he’s the one they’re backing. I haven’t heard anyone even make a rebuttal in Hillary’s favor.
Fiorina’s made some pretty forceful statements on the hot button issues. For instance, she was quite clear on her stance regarding the border and illegal immigration during her interview with the Ace of Spades HQ crew. And yet, despite that, there were people in the comments section of that very same blog attacking her left and right for being “soft” in immigration and the border.
I think Fiorina’s problem is two-fold. The first is that a lot of people are lazy. If it’s not mentioned in their favorite news source, then they’re not going to bother researching it any further. Listening to a recorded interview (to use the source I mentioned above) is simply too difficult.
tl;dl
The second is Trump. Trump is so over the top and so bombastic that the news cycle these days essentially revolves around everything that he says. As far as the major news organizations are concerned, the only reason to pay attention to the other candidates is to collect sound bites regarding the opinions of those candidates about Trump’s most recent statement.
On another note, I also noted the deluge of attacks on Fiorina, and commented about it on the AoSHQ Yahoo Group. It seems to have died down for the most part over at Ace’s blog. But I don’t know how much of that is due to time passing, and how much is due to the fact that Fiorina’s not currently a threat to anyone, and thus not worth wasting time attacking.
Beverly –
There are some indications that Hillary’s on the way out once again. Biden’s been making comments that support Sanders at the expense of Hillary, which suggests to me that he thinks she’s not going to get the nomination. And there are rumors circulating that the FBI rank and file will revolt if charges aren’t filed over the e-mail server.
Neo may be right about Carly’s statement about white supremacists that she had in mind the Skokie case. As a single incidence her wording may not have been that important. In retrospect, knowing what we know now, that attack on Geller’s meeting gave her the opportunity to take ownership of the issue by defending not only Pamela Geller’s right to have the meeting but also for Pamela Geller’s morality and decency to have the courage under tremendous pressure to stand up for what is right. Of course hindsight is much better than foresight.
I mourn her drop in the polls like none of the others – except possibly Walker, but his drop was deserved, whereas hers not so much.
She got attention for being so nonPC attacking H Clinton. But in listening to some of her other interviews I noticed she was much too careful in how far she tacked away from acceptable establishment positions, i.e. too PC. If Trump has shown us anything it’s that the anger at the establishment ignoring the will of the people runs deep.
Well thought out but aggressive assertions tapping into this discontent against elite condescending bull we’ve been betting from the top of both parties will carry somebody into the White House.
I think she could do a lot of good in the White House despite her lack of political office experience.
But one of first essential steps to get there is to recognize her strategic mistakes and correct quickly to tap into the prevailing winds.
junior:
You are correct, in my opinion. People think Trump’s the only one of the candidates who said something because he gets the coverage and they don’t.
And some people didn’t just forget or ignore what Fiorina said about things, a lot of them lied about her, and because other people didn’t know her very well the lies took hold. That’s part of what happened, too. It was because she was rising, and they saw her as a threat. Who were the “they” who lied about her? The Trump supporters, or someone else? I don’t know.
My theory, which probably supports Matt’s line, is that a lot of the VoxDay type personalities, overseas or otherwise, fell for the anti Sarah Palin Leftist propaganda in 2008. So Fio looked the same to them, and then they in the process of fighting SJWs, ended up adopting SJW tactics, which caused VoxDay and other people, of the Alternative Right or Pro Trump faction or whatever people want to call it, to initiate a viral internet campaign (which is a lot more influential than people would like to imagine given the big bucks spent on tv ads, which are wasted of course) against Fio.
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I have been for Fiorina but I think her demise started when she got on the abortion theme and planed parenthood. Romney was doing well until he did the same. Being against abortion does not get you votes and will bring down your popularity. It might be noble to not desire abortion, but many conservatives are comfortable with the idea and only a small number of people vote along the anti line, it will only get you about 10 to 20% of the vote that will come to you any how. For that matter, the president or one congressman can do nothing about the issue. Bush was elected all this line and the result was Roberts being put on the Court, what joy that has brought us as he turned out to be a liberal (so was Bush). Fiorina needs to turn up the heat on the economy, that is where she would be stronger. If you don’t like abortion, pass and amendment. But I don’t like our government telling any one how to live or take care of the body and life.
david –
Fiorina was pro-life before the election. Her speech at the Reagan Library had a Q&A at the end (which is only in the video, and not the transcript), and the very last question was from a concern troll that tried to make Fiorina look bad for opposing abortion. Fiorina shut the troll down quite nicely with a very well-done response.
If you’re discussing the videos, then keep in mind that those are primarily anti-Planned Parenthood. And given what the videos have revealed, it’s flat out unethical and immoral to keep providing government subsidies for the company. I’d be concerned about any candidate that shrugged them off due to how horrific the videos are. It’s the Left that’s blown things out of proportion by acting as if any attack against their favorite abortion mill is an attack against women everywhere.
Like others here, I think highly of Fiorina. Accomplished, sharp, lovely, and witty, voters could do much worse. (And most likely they will.)
I want to address Neo’s one point, though:
“I also think that, even though Fiorina seemed to maintain her equanimity during the campaign, something got under her skin ever-so-slightly. She kept her clarity and her ability to get to the heart of the matter, rhetorically speaking, but she made a decision to be very very solemn during the debates. This decision was not a good one; it made her seem hard and humorless. I’ve seen her in person, and she is definitely neither–in fact, she’s feminine and warm and funny. But during the debates, those qualities were muted or absent in her. That did not help her at all, IM”
That was a frequent criticism, yes. But I really appreciated her serious tone. I felt it gave her that Thatcher aura. And I love the professional who acts professional at those important times in his career while clearly having a lively personality when the times are less formal.
I am clearly out of step with the times, it seems, as the more shrill and/or juvenile the candidate, the higher the #%*%#+ polls. (Agree with Rand Paul that the polls and the media are ruining the primary. Have you seen how minuscule the sample sizes are????)