Presidential candidate and former CEO of Hewlett Packard Carly Fiorina has risen enough in polls to merit a critical examination of her record of policy statements. Her debate skills and articulate responses to difficult policy questions has given her the opportunity to be included in an upcoming CNN debate along with other major candidates.
Fiorina’s outstanding performance at a “lower-tier” debate on Fox News merited her the opportunity to advance her brand of conservatism at the next event, but what just what does Fiorina’s political philosophy entail?
The Libertarian Republic has put together some of Fiorina’s most troublesome stands and statements that our readers should note before considering offering their support.
#1. Shaky on the economics…
Although Fiorina has since recanted her statements in support of economic stimulus, it should be noted that at one time she did believe that a bailout out of big corporations was a good idea. “I think there is widespread agreement that something had to be done to stabilize the financial system,” Fiorina said.
Appearing on Fox News in support of John McCain in 2008, Fiorina said:
“And, finally, if you cannot get a loan for anything that you need to do, keep your small business running — in other words, the bank bailout was, unfortunately, necessary because credit is tight for hardworking Americans and small businesses. And John McCain has very specific proposals to help them get through this.”
And later that month, again on Fox News she said:
“I think there are many people who are uncomfortable with the government bailout. And I think many people, including Senator McCain, supported that a bailout for the very simple reason, and only one reason, and that is credit was being cut off to small businesses, to companies, and to families in America.
So something had to be done to loosen the credit freeze. And, in fact, it appears to be working thus far. While the stock market plummeted today on fears of an economic slowdown or recession, fundamentally, we can see the credit is loosening. That is a bit of good news.”
She also was in support of congress spending substantial amount of money on broadband infrastructure, as well as the Internet sales tax. In June of 2000, Fiorina said: “It’s not realistic of our industry to stand and say this taxation should never be applied to e-commerce.”
She continued, arguing that we should, “Bring our taxation system into the modern age so that we can tax in a fair way both on line and offline transactions.”
Fiorina has argued that she did not say we should be taxing the Internet, however while at HP, she ran a pilot program along with Taxware International to develop an online tax collection system.
She now claims to be against the Internet tax, but here’s video showing her advocating for it during a July 7th, 2000 testimony in front of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic System:
And here’s a statement from October 22nd, of 2009 where her lukewarm acceptance of Internet sales taxes run counter to free market principles
“Well, I do think that we’re coming to the point where we need to acknowledge that the World Wide Web and the Internet cannot be forever a sphere apart from the rest of the world. The World Wide Web cannot be forever the wild, wild west, where anything goes.”
Erick Erickson of Redstate.com called her conservative record “think to nonexistent,” arguing that while conservatives should vote for her in California’s senate race, that she is a “squishy moderate,” and “a RINO.”
Fiorina also echoed Hillary Clinton’s positions on insurance birth control mandates, proposing:
“a real, live example which I’ve been hearing a lot about from women: There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice.”
Since then she has seemingly recanted those views, stating that women “had plenty of access to birth control before and after,” the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Decision.
Fiorina called for more government intervention into the housing market in 2008, when she appeared on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren to argue:
“I also think, very honestly, that there are some proposals that Senator McCain made eight months ago, six months ago, even a year ago that had they been enacted then, would help now. So for example, he said in April that we ought to have a home mortgage plan that would allow every worthy home owner to step forward and get themselves into a new loan that they could afford, with interest rates and principal that they could afford at a 30-year fixed-year rate. That was a great idea then, and it’s an even better idea now.”
Also, while campaigning for John McCain in 2008, Fiorina seemed to advocate for cap-and-trade for environmental protection, saying: “John McCain will create a cap-and-trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources.”
Fiorina has come out strongly against the EPA and environmental regulations since she began running for president, but with a long record of flip-flops on issues of economic importance, conservatives and libertarians might wish to be wary of running into the arms of a political unknown.
#2. Supported Sonia Sotomayor
When running for senate in California in 2009, Fiorina stated that she probably would have voted to confirm liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Only 7 Republican moderate senators voted to do so at the time.
#3. Supported Obama’s Educational Program
While running unsuccessfully for Senate, Carly Fiorina praised Obama’s Race to the Top program, which calls for “internationally benchmarked” standardized tests. Still, she turned around and criticized candidate Jeb Bush for supporting the same programs, saying: “I don’t tend to agree with common core. … Bureaucracies only know one way: It’s called heavy-handed. So if you get a federal bureaucracy, or in some cases even a state bureaucracy, involved in anything, it will become heavy-handed.”
So which is it, Ms. Fiorina?
The Libertarian Republic also uncovered her 1989 doctoral dissertation from MIT, where she argued for more federal control of education:
“My research has taken me on a frequently unpredictable, always fascinating, odyssey. Like most good journeys, I did not end up quite where I thought I would, nor did I take the path I thought I might. Where I had anticipated concluding that business must play an ever-growing role if we are to adequately address the education concerns of our nation, I have ended by deciding that although business can and must play a vital role, it also must be necessarily limited. Where I began as a proponent of “States’ Rights” in education, I have ended by believing that we will never meet our own expectations of public education unless the federal government is willing to play a consistent, long-term role; unless education truly becomes a matter of national policy, not just a matter of national rhetoric.”
#4. She’s a killer, Queen.
Fiorina vehemently supports the death penalty, arguing that the government has the right to decide who lives and dies.
Carly Supports the Death Penalty
Like most Americans, Carly supports the death penalty for our nation’s worst murderers. Unfortunately, its effective implementation in California has been frustrated in large part by judges from the Ninth Circuit who have substituted their ideology for the considered judgment of the lower courts. Carly believes our nation’s leadership should have no patience for judges who abuse their discretion when it comes to settled law, as has occurred in this case.
Many conservatives have begun turning their back on the death penalty, when it was discovered how many innocent lives are condemned to death through unjust court processes, and outright fabrication of evidence from our law enforcement officials such as the FBI.
#5. A jilted ex? Or does he know her best?
Carly Fiorina went through a fairly high-profile divorce with first husband Todd Bartlem, which she claimed ended due to her ascendancy in the world of business.
Her ex-husband says otherwise, arguing that she’s creating a misleading mythology of herself, and “losing her humanity” on a “pathological” pursuit of power.
“She’s a very calculating person and her risks paid off but whenever I read descriptions about her life there’d always be this bit that she rose from a secretary at a real estate company to the head of AT&T… I mean she had a part-time position when she quit law school and she had to have money to pay the rent, so she worked as a secretary to a real estate firm in Palo Alto, but it was incidental,” Bartlem said.
Her ex also noted: ‘She’s never held a political office. She has no experience whatsoever and it boggles the imagination, but that is pretty indicative of the Republican Party. It’s like watching the Hindenburg go down – basically a flaming mess.”
While running for senate, Bartlem also cautioned:
“She’s a plutocrat. Her net worth is high and she sees herself as a member of that class. She’s got spare money in her piggy bank and she’s trying to buy an office. Most normal people would take a county thing, a state office or something, but no. She doesn’t have the ability to see that she’s so got into this thing of mind-over-matter that she can will it. But there are some things in life that you can’t will, and becoming president has got to be one of them. Carly can’t see that because she’s a corporate person. She views herself as a corporation. There’s no humility or humanity left.”
Bartlem also claims that Fiorina had an affair while they were together with senior AT&T executive Frank Fiorina, but Carly accused Bartlem of the same misdeeds.
Fiorina described the breakup as a problem of unequals: “While we were married we were not peers… After I left graduate school and had entered the workforce something changed in my marriage. As my career at AT&T progresses, I became surer of myself. As I came into my own I grew up – Todd and I grew apart.”
Bartlem’s words could be the angry rantings of a jilted ex, or they could be a deeper window into the psychology of a person whose “libido dominandi” should keep them from sitting in the seat of power.
From the Daily Mail:
‘She is pathologically narcissistic and all she cares about is her,’ he said. ‘Nothing holds together with her.
‘I got kind of suspicious of her towards the end of the marriage because she had no old friends. She had nobody that she knew in the past, and I thought, “God that’s kind of weird.”‘
Today Bartlem believes the reason lies in Carly’s ‘modus operandi’ of ‘dropping people’ as soon as they have fulfilled their useful purpose in her life. Certainly it’s what he believes happened to him.
‘I had no utility and that’s what the judgment was,’ he said. ‘If you aren’t useful to her, your time is over. She learned that in business school. I was heartbroken. It was brutal.’
Bartlem claims that when Carly walked out on him she did so without leaving so much as a forwarding address or phone number. A year after the divorce, he claims, she pulled up in the driveway of their former home and calmly said, ‘I will never see you again.’
True to her word, all contact ceased.
#6. Firing From Hewlett-Packard
Fiorina’s firing from HP is probably the most high profile of all of her negatives.
In 2005 Fiorina was fired by the board of HP. Her tenure resulted in 30,000 people losing their jobs – while she tripled her own salary and bought a $1 million yacht and five corporate jets. She pocketed $100 million, with a $65 million signing bonus, and a $21 million dollar severance for her role in overseeing HP’s decline. All this happened while Fiorina admitted we were in “the worst technology recession in 25 years.”
Fiorina’s firing from HP resulted in an immediate stock jump, climbing 10% on the news, and ending 7% higher for the day after she was gone. Arianna Packard, granddaughter of HP’s founder discouraged voters from supporting her, saying: “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.”
To be fair, Fiorina defended her record, stating:
“Every time there is a change with a company, the stock tends to go up,” she said. “The stock market is not a good arbiter of success over the long term. The average holding of stock today is less than 90 days. It is more a reflection of current emotion and conventional wisdom than anything else. And a CEO cannot run a company based on conventional wisdom or current emotion. A CEO’s job is to build sustainable value over the long term for as many employees, as many customers, and as many communities as possible.”
In conclusion, libertarians and conservative voters should take seriously a Carly Fiorina candidacy, and consider all the facts before supporting her as the leader of the Republican Party in 2016.