Business savvy didn't help Fiorina, Whitman (Flashback)

Even though Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina previously led two of California’s most iconic technology companies, the two candidates’ business pedigrees weren’t enough to sway voters in the Golden State on Tuesday.

Boxer hammered Fiorina about her rocky tenure as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in TV ads, criticizing the former executive for laying off scores of employees, shipping American jobs overseas and securing a cushy severance package before leaving the company. The TV ads reopened the wounds of former HP employees who were casualties of the computer maker’s controversial merger with Compaq, which Fiorina orchestrated.

And Fiorina’s early attempts at viral video ads also got her attention, but perhaps the wrong kind. Philip de Vellis, vice president of new media for Murphy Putnam Media, said Fiorina’s well-known “Demon Sheep” YouTube video seemed to backfire

I agree and I really hate to lose what Walker has done. Really, he has indeed accomplished something. I want to imagine a race where trump wasn’t there; in that setting he would have been the Jeb! foil.

But strong leadership and solid goals will always yield paydirt. If he continues at the state level good things will come. Walker is a gemstone in the alluvial deposit of the GOPe IMO.

Brought to you by someone fired up on Trump, just for the record.

RINO, huh? She’s called the government (which is partially run by Republicans) inept, bloated, and CORRUPT. CORRUPT. I haven’t heard any other candidate use language that strong about Washington and its politicians. She also refers with contempt to the “political class” in Washington. Doesn’t sound like RINO talk to me. And she’s got Republican mouthpiece magazines and newspapers like Fortune and the Wall Street Journal bashing her left and right as they try to salvage the candidacy of Jeb Bush, a true RINO.

Read her memoir, “Tough Choices.” She’s not a loser. She was steadily promoted at Bell Telephone and managed enormous accounts there, including telecommunication accounts with major government agencies such as the General Services Administration and the US Geological Survey. She took on management of stodgy, out of date Hewlett Packard in 1996—a company whose last innovation, the inkjet printer, came in the early 1980s. She shook up HP’s calcified management structure, consolidated its many divisions that weren’t communicating with each other, and increased funding and support for the R&D department.

She’s currently managing what has been described by charity watchdog groups as one of the largest and most efficiently run charities in the world.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has had four casinos go belly up with the loss of many jobs. While he was building casinos and golf courses and hotels, Fiorina was creating and developing telecommunications and internet services, was acting as a consultant to the Defense Department, and was running highly successful and well-managed charities. She has a Bachelor’s with honors from Stanford and two MBAs—one from the University of Maryland and the other from MIT’s Sloan School of Business. Trump, who brags he is so smart, only has a B.S. She is no loser. Anyone who underestimates her is making a big mistake.

She and Ted Cruz are the smartest and best-informed candidates on that stage. The others aren’t even close. And both have the class and gravitas to be president. They don’t stoop to bragging, and insults and name-calling and personal attacks. They don’t have to.

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