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Ted Cruz picks Carly Fiorina for his running mate

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Your 2016 GOP ticket: Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina
Your 2016 GOP ticket: Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina

All my Facebook friends except Doug were thrilled with this pick, especially the Republican women. Let’s look at some articles to see what we are getting with this pick.

Let’s start with the radically leftist Washington Post, and socially liberally columnist Jennifer Rubin.

She gives 10 reasons why the selection of Fiorina will help Cruz:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) announced his VP pick, Carly Fiorina, in Indiana this afternoon, taking his best shot to rouse the GOP and stop Donald Trump. Watching first Cruz and then Fiorina, one could see why this might work:

[…]2. She, in a somewhat convincing fashion, lumped Trump and Hillary Clinton together, saying they are not going to change the system. “They are the system,” she said with great deliberateness. That’s a plausible argument, actually. They are two very privileged, ideologically slippery candidates who’ve worked the system to their advantage. Cruz has tried to convey the same, but her delivery was simply better.

[…]5. She is making a straight play for female voters. She stressed her own experiences in the workplace. Cruz stressed them. Cruz recounted her standing up to Trump’s insult about her face. Many women will perk up and listen to that message.

[…]7. She tried her best to humanize Cruz, mentioning they watched the Final Four together (this isIndiana, folks) and singing (yeah, singing) one of her made-up songs to the Cruz daughters. Women, especially younger moms, are likely to find that endearing. At least it was unexpected. The campaign can use some spontaneity.

[…]9. She and Cruz reinforce one another’s mental agility. These people are smart, whip smart.

I can’t help but think that every woman who has ever struggled in the workplace is going to have some sympathy for a Cruz-Fiorina ticket. Everybody resonates with the story of the woman who starts of as a receptionist and then rises to the level of CEO. It’s important that conservative women be presented to contrast with radical feminist rhetoric.

Remember how Cruz talked about his mother Eleanor and his wife Heidi as “strong women”?

Picking Fiorina reinforces that this is something important to him, and creates a clear contrast with the promiscuous, pro-abortion, twice-divorced, adulterous misogynist scumbag that he is running against.

Jim Geraghty at National Review likes the pick, but for different reasons:

She’s strong and polished on the stump, equally at home giving a big policy speech, answering questions at a town hall, or offering one-liners on a late-night talk show. She’s an outsider, in a year when political neophytes are all the rage. And most important of all, she has the best chance of any potential running mate to negate presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s political strengths.

“She tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights,” Fiorina said at last year’s CPAC, referencing the Clinton Foundation’s unsavory donors. “I come from a world where speeches are not accomplishments. Activity isn’t accomplishment. Title isn’t accomplishment. I come from a world where you have to actually do something; you have to produce results.”

Fiorina can rip into Clinton without fear of being called sexist. She can also coopt Clinton’s message to female voters, letting them know that she’s been through exactly the same aggravations and indignities they’ve experienced in their everyday lives. She made a point of claiming the feminist mantle away from Democrats even as she announced that she was suspending her campaign:

Do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you’re a woman. That is not feminism. Feminism doesn’t shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts.

If I had to summarize Fiorina in one sentence, it’s that she is competent. She is the polar opposite of the clown Trump. She answers policy questions with so many details and so much evidence, that even an anti-feminist like me thinks “gee, I’m glad that she is up there to put forward conservative views and not someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about”. I never feel that she is a shrill-shrieking harpy like Hillary Clinton when she talks. In fact, when she talks, I want her to keep talking. She has a way of being strong and earnest that is feminine, if that makes any sense. I enjoy hearing her speak, I enjoy that she is on the conservative team.

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