Does anyone know where Carly Fiorina is? Has anyone seen her recently? Do we need to send out a search party?
Immediately after the second Republican debate, Fiorina saw a massive spike in her polling numbers, reaching as high as 15% from her previous 4%. In many areas she had firmly secured the second place rank, edging out Ben Carson. But in just a few short weeks, her support has fallen back down to 6%, placing her in fourth or fifth place, depending on which polls you’re looking at.
Disgraced political adviser and failed pollster Dick Morris has a theory about why Fiorina has fallen from grace. Morris blames bloggers. In a recent op-ed, Morris said that bloggers were able to expose Fiorina’s pathetic business record, where she approved the buyout of failing computer company Compaq and was then responsible for the firing of 30,000 employees, and the fact that today Fiorina is widely regarded as one of the worst CEOs in American history – a fact that Donald Trump was kind enough to point out during the second GOP debate.
I agree with Morris, to an extent. The citizens media has done a phenomenal job of exposing the lies and histories of all the candidates, but if they are the sole reason that Fiorina has fallen out of favor then the other candidates would have also fallen. I believe that the underlying cause of Fiorina’s decline is the beliefs of the Republican base.
The problem is that the Republican base is incredibly misogynistic, and there’s absolutely no way that they would ever allow a woman to win their primaries. The Party has shown nothing but contempt for women, so Fiorina’s fall should hardly come as a surprise. Her novelty has worn off, and Republican voters have gone back to clinging to candidates who tell them how to think, how to feel, and what they need to be afraid of.
Another issue could be her complete lack of experience and her horrible business record. At least the other non-politician candidates on the Republican side have some business successes to talk about. But Fiorina really is listed as one of the worst CEOs in our history, and that’s not exactly a record that you want to talk about on the campaign trail.
So it won’t be long before Carly Fiorina joins the ranks of Scott Walker and Rick Perry and becomes just another “also ran” in the GOP freak show. And that day can’t come soon enough.
