Opinion
Can Carly cut it with California conservatives?
By: John Vaught LaBeaume
Special to The Examiner
11/24/09 5:08 PM EST
Over the past year, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has battled cancer and hit the campaign trail as one of the McCain campaign’s key surrogates. Now she’s seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
Fiorina seems to be an NRSC recruitment coup, and she has a host of Senate Republican heavyweights in her corner, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Other endorsers who would like for her to join them in the World’s Most Exclusive Club range from health care apostate Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME) on the left to Boxer “buddy” Sen. Jim Inhofe on the right.
Still, the path to the nomination hasn’t been cleared for her, and she’s being forced to defend her conservative credentials by Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a darling of the Tea Partying conservative base. And some are whispering that an upset might be in those tea leaves, especially if that base remains agitated enough by the Obama Administration’s agenda to dominate the Golden State’s Republican primary electorate next year.
Fiorina was in Washington this morning to meet with mostly right-of-center journalists gathered for another of the American Spectator’s Newsmaker Breakfasts, where she defended her pro-life bona fides and tackled other base obsessions, including gay marriage and Supreme Court nominations.
But, Fiorina really wanted to hammer home one point: that she’s more “electable.” Boxer’s “time is up.” She may share a few traits in common with California’s senior senator – she’s a female, Jewish Democrat with political roots in the Bay Area who was first sent to the Senate in 1992’s “Year of the Woman” – but she is no DiFi. Her leftist voting record is “out of step” with her more moderate colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). And, her temperament renders her less effective than her more collegial cohort.
So, Boxer is vulnerable, Fiorina insists, but only to a challenge from herself.
Her case for being the more “electable” Republican in this race is solid and her reasoning is pithy: Barbara Boxer “knows how to beat white men in California.”
Indeed, Boxer trounced her two most recent Republican opponents – former California Secretary of State Bill Jones in 2002 and former state Treasurer Matt Fong in 1998 – neither of whom was considered the conservative that DeVore boasts to be. And, indeed, Fong is Asian-American, not just some “angry white male.” But, this little inconsistency only bolsters Fiorina’s assertion. If both Fong and Jones were felled by Boxer’s bashing, letting her divert the discussion away from her record, then DeVore would be the “opposition that Barbara Boxer hopes she faces,” fitting right into her narrative, permitting her to yet again scare suburban female voters from straying away from her column.
So, as a polished and accomplished businesswoman from the world of high tech, “Carly” defuses Boxer’s now tired tactics, and steers the debate to fiscal issues, riding a wave of concern that the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are meddling too much, and threatening to stifle the climate of innovation and entrepreneurship necessary for the economy to get moving again.
DeVore, Fiorina hints, would be a Crocker Jarmon for the new millennium, the stodgy and smug complacent conservative California Senator that Robert Redford’s idealistic McGovernick upset in 1972’s political fairy tale, “The Candidate.”
The problem here is that DeVore is anything but complacent. He’s waging a vigorous upstart campaign.
When asked to embellish upon a strategy for securing the Republican nomination, Fiorina offered little more than reiterating her “electability” talking points, and decried DeVore’s characterization of her record.
Fiorina may have a plausible case that she’s the more competitive general election candidate, but she needs to put together a plan to win a conservative-dominated Republican primary first.
Fiorina seems to be an NRSC recruitment coup, and she has a host of Senate Republican heavyweights in her corner, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Other endorsers who would like for her to join them in the World’s Most Exclusive Club range from health care apostate Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME) on the left to Boxer “buddy” Sen. Jim Inhofe on the right.
Still, the path to the nomination hasn’t been cleared for her, and she’s being forced to defend her conservative credentials by Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a darling of the Tea Partying conservative base. And some are whispering that an upset might be in those tea leaves, especially if that base remains agitated enough by the Obama Administration’s agenda to dominate the Golden State’s Republican primary electorate next year.
Fiorina was in Washington this morning to meet with mostly right-of-center journalists gathered for another of the American Spectator’s Newsmaker Breakfasts, where she defended her pro-life bona fides and tackled other base obsessions, including gay marriage and Supreme Court nominations.
But, Fiorina really wanted to hammer home one point: that she’s more “electable.” Boxer’s “time is up.” She may share a few traits in common with California’s senior senator – she’s a female, Jewish Democrat with political roots in the Bay Area who was first sent to the Senate in 1992’s “Year of the Woman” – but she is no DiFi. Her leftist voting record is “out of step” with her more moderate colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). And, her temperament renders her less effective than her more collegial cohort.
So, Boxer is vulnerable, Fiorina insists, but only to a challenge from herself.
Her case for being the more “electable” Republican in this race is solid and her reasoning is pithy: Barbara Boxer “knows how to beat white men in California.”
Indeed, Boxer trounced her two most recent Republican opponents – former California Secretary of State Bill Jones in 2002 and former state Treasurer Matt Fong in 1998 – neither of whom was considered the conservative that DeVore boasts to be. And, indeed, Fong is Asian-American, not just some “angry white male.” But, this little inconsistency only bolsters Fiorina’s assertion. If both Fong and Jones were felled by Boxer’s bashing, letting her divert the discussion away from her record, then DeVore would be the “opposition that Barbara Boxer hopes she faces,” fitting right into her narrative, permitting her to yet again scare suburban female voters from straying away from her column.
So, as a polished and accomplished businesswoman from the world of high tech, “Carly” defuses Boxer’s now tired tactics, and steers the debate to fiscal issues, riding a wave of concern that the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are meddling too much, and threatening to stifle the climate of innovation and entrepreneurship necessary for the economy to get moving again.
DeVore, Fiorina hints, would be a Crocker Jarmon for the new millennium, the stodgy and smug complacent conservative California Senator that Robert Redford’s idealistic McGovernick upset in 1972’s political fairy tale, “The Candidate.”
The problem here is that DeVore is anything but complacent. He’s waging a vigorous upstart campaign.
When asked to embellish upon a strategy for securing the Republican nomination, Fiorina offered little more than reiterating her “electability” talking points, and decried DeVore’s characterization of her record.
Fiorina may have a plausible case that she’s the more competitive general election candidate, but she needs to put together a plan to win a conservative-dominated Republican primary first.
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