In a Monday blog post, The Nation’s Michelle Goldberg suggested that the takeaway from Carly Fiorina’s presidential candidacy is that Republicans may be as cynical as they are dumb.
For Goldberg, the cynicism is two-pronged. One prong is the hope that Fiorina will attract the same sort of “anti-feminist” voters that Sarah Palin did. The other is that she’ll be able to needle Hillary Clinton in a manner that men wouldn’t for fear of being called sexist.
The dumb part, claimed Goldberg, is that Republicans seem to assume voters won’t figure out that Fiorina “is as bad as any of the male candidates on issues of unique concern to women. She’s implacably anti-abortion…and is against equal pay laws. The question…isn’t whether Fiorina will appeal to women, but whether Republicans are blinkered enough to think that she will.”
From Goldberg’s post (bolding added):
For a movement that so often disdains identity politics, conservatives sure love to deploy them. In 2008, Sarah Palin’s vice presidential nomination was a risible, tone-deaf attempt to capture women voters disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s primary loss. After Barack Obama became president, the GOP attempted to shed its overwhelmingly white image by putting the clownish Michael Brown [actually, Michael Steele] in charge of the party. And now, Carly Fiorina is counting on conservatives’ desire to counter excitement over Clinton’s renewed ascendency with a lady candidate of their own.
Fiorina…is clearly not going to be the Republican nominee for president. She probably knows that—my guess is that she’s running for vice president, and, failing that, a Fox News gig. It’s a clever move for a political opportunist, because there’s a vacancy on the right for a female anti-feminist. With so-called women’s issues poised to play an unprecedented role in the upcoming election, Republicans need someone who can troll Hillary Clinton without seeming sexist…
…“If Hillary Clinton were to face a female nominee, there are a whole set of things that she won’t be able to talk about,” [Fiorina] told reporters a few weeks ago. “She won’t be able to talk about being the first woman president. She won’t be able to talk about a war on women without being challenged. She won’t be able to play the gender card”…
Because women are not, as a gender, deeply stupid, this probably won’t work…Fiorina, after all, is as bad as any of the male candidates on issues of unique concern to women. She’s implacably anti-abortion…She opposes raising the federal minimum wage—an issue of especial salience to women, who make up the majority of minimum-wage workers—and is against equal pay laws.
The question, then, isn’t whether Fiorina will appeal to women, but whether Republicans are blinkered enough to think that she will.
