How angry is Carly Fiorina? So angry she can’t see straight. That’s the only explanation for the yawning gulf between what she says and the plainly visible facts.
Fiorina stands out among the Republican presidential candidates not just because she is a woman but also because she has adopted a strategy of breathing fire. She presents herself as mad about everything, and she never gives an inch on anything she says, no matter how demonstrably untrue. Unhappily for our democracy, this approach has vaulted her into the upper tier of the multitudinous GOP field.
Front-runner Donald Trump is also full of bluff and bluster, but there’s a difference. Trump makes sweeping statements with no basis in fact, but they cannot be shown to be false. To cite one example, I don’t for a minute believe the ridiculous claim that the government of Mexico is deliberately sending criminals across the border. But how can anyone prove the negative?
Fiorina, however, is all about specificity. During the debate earlier this month, she created an electric moment when she went after Planned Parenthood. Glaring into the camera, she challenged Democrats to view the sting videos taken by anti-abortion activists and “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.”
