The Palinization of Carly begins
In a mind-numbingly banal screed in the Washington Post this week, columnist Ruth Marcus fired the first shot in the war we all knew was coming — the war against Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. I call this the Palinization of Carly, whereby a center-right woman who is strong in her beliefs is belittled, mocked and minimized by the Left.
Ms. Marcus, a presumed feminist, insists this has nothing at all to do with ideology. And then proceeds to lay out how Carly’s mere candidacy offends her. This bears repeating, Ruth is offended that Carly Fiorina is running for president. She is not at all offended that her candidate of choice — Hillary Clinton — has perpetrated massive coverups of Benghazi and her unauthorized secret email server. The ability to run from her past makes Hillary a totes qualified and unoffensive candidate to Ruth Marcus.
And Ruth begrudgingly admits that Hillary probably wouldn’t be where she’s at if not for her husband. It’s not optimal, obvs, but perfectly acceptable if you’re a liberal woman.
Yes, Clinton’s path to power came through her husband; if I were designing the perfect First Woman President, she would not be the daughter or the wife of a prominent politician. Yet Clinton’s history does not negate the current reality of her résumé and her deep grounding in both foreign and domestic policy.
But a conservative woman like Carly Fiorina, who made her own way in the world and ran a Fortune 500 company? Unqualified. Also, offensive.
But it’s okay, you guys, Ruth Marcus doesn’t like Ben Carson, either. Notice a theme here?
Oh, and there’s this gem:
It’s not sexist to criticize Fiorina for being unqualified. What would be sexist is to hold her to a lower standard than a man with similarly paltry credentials.
Paltry credentials. Such as, say, Hillary Clinton’s? Or Barack Obama’s?
Make no mistake, Ruth Marcus doesn’t dislike Carly because Carly has no record to run on, she dislikes Carly because Carly has hit the campaign trail running, attacking Hillary in a way only another female candidate can do. Carly is answering questions, quite a novel idea — and one that Hillary clearly doesn’t subscribe to — for a presidential candidate.
This is what scares the Left about conservative women running for office. They are unapologetic about their beliefs and unafraid to answer the difficult questions.
We’ve seen it so many times before, most notably with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. It comes as absolutely no surprise to conservative women that the Left is going after Carly Fiorna; I think most of us are wondering what took them so long.
Image via AP
