The Democrat Counter-Attack Against Carly Fiorina Begins
For most the past year, Democrats have regarded the field of Republican presidential candidates as falling into two categories: a band of right-wing crazies that could be easily dismissed, and Jeb Bush, a reasonable-sounding moderate who could nonetheless be easily demonized as another version of his hated brother George. The rise of Donald Trump didn’t alter their view of the 2016 race as one that was theirs to lose, provided that Hillary Clinton didn’t implode over lies about her emails and Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest. But today’s front page story in the New York Times about Carly Fiorina being the Republican Party’s fool-proof antidote to the Democrats’ false “war on women” meme was the official signal that liberals are good and worried about the former Hewlett-Packard CEO. With Hillary’s “inevitable” march to the presidency evaporating before their eyes and with an aging gaffe-prone Joe Biden or an aging socialist from Vermont being only alternatives to Hillary, that presents Democrats with the possibility of an election in which the gender gap is turned on its head. So it is little surprise that in the days since Fiorina’s smashing performance in the CNN debate this week, the left has begun to push back hard against her candidacy. That means Fiorina is about to start getting the same treatment that was dished out to Mitt Romney four years and which Democrats had been preparing against Jeb Bush. The question now is whether Fiorina can survive the onslaught.
The first salvo fired in Fiorina’s direction was an attempt to turn one of her best moments in Wednesday’s debates against her. Fiorina’s impassioned plea for Congress to stand its ground on defunding Planned Parenthood drew rave reviews from conservatives when she said, “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch 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.” Liberal writers furiously replied that no such video exists and left-wing fact checkers, such as those at the Washington Post, pronounced Fiorina’s claims to be false. But, as Mollie Hemmingway wrote at The Federalist, the entirety of the 10 videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, do vindicate Fiorina’s claim. More to the point, the seventh of the videos contains testimony from a former staffer that describes the incident Fiorina described with images of an aborted child.
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