Posted on 09/19/2015 6:25:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's easy to see why many Republican voters are newly taken with Carly Fiorina. She is a superb debater, with a steely gaze, a flawless delivery and a mastery of talking points. She knows what she wants to say and how to command attention. She exudes a bulletproof aura that inspires confidence.
There are only two problems with Fiorina: what she has done in the past, and what she promises for the future. An inspection of those is a reminder of where she got started: in sales. She may offer an irresistible pitch. But creating a good product? That demands a skill set she isn't known to possess.
During her time as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, its stock plunged 52 percent -- double the drop in the Nasdaq average, and worse than her competition, including Dell, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. The company repeatedly whiffed on her financial targets. In the end, Fiorina got cashiered. More telling, perhaps, is that in the decade since, no corporation has hired her.
This picture contrasts starkly with her 1999 arrival at Hewlett-Packard, where, according to The Wall Street Journal, "she was greeted as nothing less than a savior." When she was fired, the Journal noted that Fiorina "had a flair for marketing and public speaking" and "a compelling public persona" but "was a highly polarizing figure who stirred deep animosity among many veteran employees."
Her big decision was acquiring rival Compaq, a move that became to her what the Iraq war was to George W. Bush: a dismal failure from which she apparently learned nothing.
"This was a big bet that didn't pay off, that didn't even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP's board said was in store," concluded Fortune's Carol J. Loomis shortly before Fiorina was fired. Yet Fiorina pretends it was a triumph.
That's not the only sign that she talks a much better game than she plays. She got an ovation for rejecting Donald Trump's attempt to explain away his disparagement of her looks: "I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
You might forget that when she ran for the U.S. Senate in California in 2010 against incumbent Barbara Boxer, she was caught on video belittling her opponent in Trump-like fashion: "God, what is that hair? So yesterday!"
In Wednesday's debate, Fiorina was equally facile, and equally misleading, on more substantive topics. Asked how to handle Vladimir Putin, she replied, "What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the 6th Fleet. I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland. I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I'd probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message."
It was the sort of litany that thrills conservatives, but as policy, it was the second day of a garage sale -- replete with items that are useless, superfluous or irrelevant. The U.S. Navy is the biggest and most capable on Earth. We spend eight times more on defense than Russia -- without counting what our NATO allies spend. If all that doesn't intimidate Putin, a slightly augmented Sixth Fleet isn't going to make his blood run cold.
Neither is "a few thousand more troops" in Germany. Putting bases and GIs in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania might deter aggression against them -- but oddly, she didn't suggest it.
Barack Obama canceled a missile defense program in Poland because it didn't work. He replaced it with a system that Robert Gates, his defense secretary (and George W. Bush's), believed was better. Obama has also conducted military exercises in the Baltic states. Putin would get the message, all right: that Fiorina is a fraud.
She wowed the crowd by daring Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch the video from a Planned Parenthood abortion of "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."
The nonpartisan FactCheck.org noted an inconvenient fact: "The scene she described, though, does not exist in any of the videos" released by the Center for Medical Progress. Other fact checkers agreed, and her campaign offered no footage to rebut them.
That's Fiorina in a nutshell. What was obvious to anyone who watched the debate is what Businessweek noted when she took over HP: "Carly Fiorina has a silver tongue and an iron will." The rest, however, is fool's gold.
I can’t stand the 10% head tilt!
He sure did
She has been supportive of the DREAM Act and every “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that has been proposed.
Amnesty is surrender, of the rule of law and the country.
Problem is, it is tough to criticize Carly for electoral inexperience when most of us have gone all in for Trump. She has been drafting on his coat tails, and then he opened the door for her with the face comment.
I agree with what you say about amnesty, but I have read other claims posted about her here that turned out to be false, so I want to examine this one.
Fiorina, like ALL!! the candidates, certainly has her flaws. But when she’s attacked by a skunk like Chapman, then I think twice.
The Dems would make her Romney with less hair.
Pray America is waking
Carly.
False and fake as well.
As another poster said: Snarly Carly.
Both she and Don are glorified snake-oil salesmen - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Elect either at our country’s peril.
LOLOLOL....Secretariat....out to pasture.
Thanks for the link, I’ll take a close look at it.
The Dems would make her Romney with less hair.
And more cosmetic procedures.
Snarly would fit right in with the Dims....she worked closely with them, during the time she *advised* the McStain 2008 campaign....even admitting, at the time, if she weren’t for McShame, she’d be FOR Hellary!
It was REALLY a poor choice of names. She should have thought it through. The jokes write themselves.
Flawless delivery? Am I the only one who thinks her voice was quavering in the early minutes of the debate? She interrupted and inserted herself everywhere like a squirrel in church.
She lied about the PP videos in more ways than one. Implying something in there that wasn’t, and pretending to give a rip. It would embarrass Joe Isuzu.
She looks like a Bruce Jenner mannequin, more wooden than Pinocchio and a better liar too. In a campaign against Hillary, she’d make Clinton look like a natural woman with baking skills and a jolly sense of humor.
Oh well. As usual, the Democrats will decide these things for us, in the open primaries.
She has previously delivered those well-rehearsed talking points. As Trump said, she’s almost robotic. It’s when she’s challenged or caught off guard the real Carly emerges.
Veering off script, or off Hegelian tactics, tripped her up during the CNN debate, such as her brushing off Yale’s Jeffery Sonnenfeld as “a well-known Clintonite.”
As Sonnenfeld said, “She shoots the messenger.”
Skip ahead to the 4:00 mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBTpbwtEMMk
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor, was mentioned by Donald Trump in his attacks on Carly Fiorina at the second GOP presidential debate. Fiorina calls Sonnenfeld a ‘Clintonite.’ Sonnenfeld refutes that label & says he’s never worked for Hillary but has helped several GOP candidates.
Her job is to bloody Trump if she succeeds in that task she will be destroyed over abortion and Jebby will then be resurrected to save the day, unless Jebby is totally destroyed in the fall out then they may decide to like her.
I said back before the debates even began that if Carly got on the stage with Trump she would take support from Trump but she apparently destroyed Carson first which I did not expect
I love this line!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.