Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and one-time Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was all over the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. On Thursday she gave a speech, held a “meet and greet” session and spoke on a panel about the middle class; on Friday she spoke on two additional panels and on a fourth panel Saturday — and all the while walked around the conference giving interviews to various news outlets.
She didn’t have the massive following that Ben Carson or Rand Paul had, but she also didn’t surround herself with her own staffers to appear more popular than she was, as former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., did. By Saturday she was walking freely through the conference hall with just her press person.
Fiorina sat down with the Washington Examiner for a short interview early Saturday morning, in the ghost town that radio row had by then become, outside of Mark Levin’s speech. The loud applause from Levin’s crowd was the only reminder that CPAC was even still going on.
Fiorina was polished and prepared, even for my question about the infamous “demon sheep” ad.
But perhaps one of Fiorina’s strongest assets is her plan to combat the Democrats’ “war on women” narrative. Last year Fiorina launched the Unlocking Potential Project in order to help conservative women candidates, and potential 2016 candidate Fiorina is building off of that premise in order to address an almost certain presidential narrative.
“I think we address it by fearlessly laying the facts out,” Fiorina said. “The rhetoric is so ridiculous when you look at the facts.”
“If anyone’s waging a war on women, it’s Democratic policies,” she added.
That war, Fiorina insisted, came from policies that have caused record numbers of women to be living in poverty and dependent on food stamps.
“I find the rhetoric from the Democratic Party insulting in the extreme,” Fiorina said. “And I just don’t understand why people have been afraid to push back on it. The facts are on our side.”
Her solution as a candidate would be to “throw the facts right back in their face and take the fight to them.”
But that’s only half the fight. A Republican nominee can’t just say there is no war on women or say that Democratic policies hurt women, she said. The nominee has to demonstrate that conservative policies actually help.
“We have to land them in people’s lives,” Fiorina said. “We have to speak in personal, empathetic terms, not in big, huge policy terms.”
As an example, she described the difficulties a young woman would have trying to open a salon. “[You] aren’t going to make it through because it will take you over a year to get through the permitting process and you don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to help you to do it,” she said.
Beyond explaining the specifics of how government is actively working against individuals, the GOP needs to make sure voters know that the party wants to give everyone the opportunity to achieve their own American dream, emphasizing that a helping hand is necessary at times.
As a candidate, Fiorina is considered a longshot. Her CPAC performance no doubt raised her profile within the party, and people I spoke to after her speech — in which she eviscerated presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — said they were now intrigued and wanted to hear more from her. She was the only nominee I saw that not only challenged Clinton directly but actually addressed the very real issue of the war on women narrative.
Fiorina said she was even “bemused” by Clinton adopting some of her lines, like “unlocking potential” or even the name and cover of her 2006 book.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Fiorina said.
Beyond the amusement, Fiorina said Clinton was a classic example of “do as I say, not as I do.”
“Words are just words,” Fiorina said. What counts is whether your actions are consistent with your words. What counts is: Are you doing what you say you’re going to do? Or are you just talking? And so, I think it’s just talk on her part.”
Fiorina will have some big hurdles to overcome, including her failed Senate campaign of 2010. When asked how she plans to address the issue, Fiorina was positive.
“I’m actually really proud of that race,” she said, reminding me that she came from behind to win the Republican primary and did as well as she did running as a conservative in liberal California.
“Despite that loss, I gained more Republican votes, more Democratic votes and more independent votes than virtually anyone else running anywhere in the country that year. That’s how big California is,” she said. “So I think I’ve demonstrated that I can unify the party and that I can then reach beyond the party with a conservative message.”
Ultimately, Fiorina said, the Republican nominee must unify the party. Asked where she believed she fell on the conservative spectrum, she couldn’t say.
“I would describe myself as a conservative the way Reagan talked about a three-legged stool,” she said. “I think we have to have a strong national defense, I think we have to have strong conservative values and I think we have to have an economy that provides economic opportunity for absolutely every person in America.”
“So I don’t know where you put me on the spectrum but that’s how I think about my conservative politics,” she added.
In 2008, Fiorina was floated in some circles as a potential vice presidential pick for Sen. John McCain. She says she’s focused on her own campaign at this time and the importance of electing a Republican president.
“If I get in this, I’m doing it because I think I’m qualified to be president. And that’s the job I’m going for,” she said. “What happens after that, who knows.”
Finally, I asked if we could expect any demon sheep-like ads during a Fiorina candidacy. She didn’t rule it out.
“Well, who knows,” she said, laughing. “You know, some people loved that ad; some people hated that ad. But what that ad did was, very inexpensively, put me on the map. So sometimes when you don’t have as many resources as, say a Jeb Bush is going to have, you have to do things a little bit differently to break through.”
