Marcus: Fiorina’s dishonest but also a target of sexist comments

Fiorina’s comments could be chalked up to forgivable hyperbole, easily remedied. But backing down is not the Fiorina way. Repeatedly challenged after the debate, she repeatedly asserted that she was correct and that any disagreement was lazy partisanship from critics who hadn’t bothered to watch.

This dishonesty is part of a pattern. Fiorina’s up-by-the-bootstraps foundational story — from secretary to CEO — is similarly misleading. In fact, Fiorina is the child of privilege. Her father was a Stanford law professor, Duke Law School dean, deputy attorney general and federal appeals court judge. Horatio Alger this is not.

‘Bimbos and dogs’

At the same time, Trump manages to put me in Fiorina’s corner. In Trumpworld, where women matter for their looks, there are only two kinds: attractive and therefore “bimbos” (see, e.g., Megyn Kelly), or “dogs.” Which is not quite what he said about Fiorina to Rolling Stone but close: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

Even when he is backpedaling, Trump can only do it condescendingly, in terms of appearance.

“I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman,” Trump said at the debate. Dig, Donald, dig.

When he’s not commenting on appearance, Trump’s criticism of Fiorina is laced with not-so-subtle sexism. “She’s got a good pitter-patter,” Trump told George Stephanopoulos, “but if you listen to her for more than five minutes straight, you get a headache.” He used the same dismissive line on “Fox and Friends” the next day.

Pitter-patter? Headache? The first is classic trivializing of what a woman has to say. The second is classic invocation of woman as nagging shrew. It’s easy to imagine Trump complaining to one of his ex-wives that she’s giving him a headache. It’s hard to imagine him using those words in connection with one of his male opponents.

Not that Trump’s fellow candidates are paragons of gender-neutral virtue. How revealing that Mike Huckabee picked his wife and Ben Carson his mother as candidates for the $10 bill.

Really, women are only valued as wives and mothers? They can’t think of a woman — an American woman, Jeb Bush, not Margaret Thatcher — with accomplishments besides marriage and procreation? What if a female candidate selected her husband or father to be featured on the national currency?

Fiorina rejected the premise as mere “gesture,” arguing that “we ought to recognize that women are not a special interest group.” But currency is inherently symbolic; including a woman is about equal, not special, treatment.

Fiorina’s response lets her appear above the fray of gender politics, even as she benefits from being the only woman in the GOP race and touts her ability to take on Hillary Clinton. Anyone else get the sense that the only woman Fiorina would be happy to see on the $10 bill is … Fiorina?