Carly Fiorina Doesn't Heart Sean Hannity
Vladimir Mao Forrest
Reported by Ellen -
GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was ca
ught unawares criticizing fellow California Republican Meg Whitman for going
on Sean Hannity's show. Fiorina said, ""It's really surprising that on the
first day of the general [election], Meg Whitman is going on Sean Hannity,"
she said. "I think it's bizarre.I think it's a very bad choice actually. You
know how he is."
As Think Progress noted, it's probably only a matter of time until Fiorina
walks back her comments. "We can't wait for Fiorina to explain how her dig
at Hannity is simply a misinterpretation by the liberal media, and what she
was actually trying to say is that Hannity is one of the best 'journalists'
on TV today."
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/09/fiorina-diss-hannity/
Ha, ha! Conservative Fiorina called you out, Hannity! We bet her
conservative supporters feel the same way about you. Can't blame this one on
liberals or Obama this time, you fool.
Fiorina left Hewlett Packard in ashes, and her name is poison to many here
in the Silicon Valley. Her ugliness is obvious, so I guess she is the
perfect candidate for the R's.
Sigmond Fraud
Suckers!
------------
"Politics can be risky business for a CEO"
By Karen Tumulty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 11, 2010; A03
AS MEG WHITMAN, California's new Republican gubernatorial nominee,
puts it, she and GOP Senate pick Carly Fiorina are the "worst
nightmare" of career politicians: "two businesswomen from the real
world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things
done."
Is she right? There is a long history of executives attempting to make
the leap into public office, going at least as far back as
industrialist Wendell Wilkie's bid to unseat Franklin D. Roosevelt in
1940. And there is much about the political environment in 2010 that
would seem to make this election year a bull market for CEOs: Voters
are eager to turn out officeholders; state and federal budgets are
soaked in red ink; unemployment tops the list of public concerns in
just about every poll. If only the government worked like a business,
the executives-turned-candidates are fond of telling us, we'd all be
better off.
The trouble is, by and large, CEOs have turned out to be pretty
mediocre politicians.
Not that there hasn't been a success story every now and then: Michael
R. Bloomberg, the billionaire Republican-turned-independent mayor of
New York, or Democrat Mark Warner, who made a cellphone fortune before
becoming governor and now senator from Virginia.
For every one of those, however, you can count many more such as
onetime Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi, who parted with $40
million in 1998 to come in a distant second in the California
Democratic gubernatorial primary. Or former Amway chief Dick DeVos, a
Republican who shelled out $35 million in 2006, only to get creamed by
an unpopular governor in Michigan. Or failed presidential contenders
including data-processing billionaire Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, and
publishing magnate Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000.
Even when they manage to get elected, CEOs often are surprised to
learn that their skills in the boardroom do not easily translate to
the business of governing. Former Goldman Sachs head Jon S. Corzine
discovered this when he was ousted as New Jersey governor last year.
"You don't have the flexibility you imagined. There's no exact
translation," Corzine, a Democrat, later told Newsweek.
Warner agrees. "This notion that you're just going to run a government
like a business -- it's a lot easier said than done. Even as a
[governor], you've got to build a lot more consensus than you do in
the business world," he said.
Warner's tenure in Richmond was spent slashing budgets, raising taxes
and seeing more than a few of his early proposals shrugged off by a
Republican legislature. "It took a year-plus of getting the stuffing
kicked out of me," Warner said.
Still, they keep trying. In addition to the two first-time candidates
who will top the GOP ticket in California this year, there is Linda
McMahon, former chief of World Wrestling Entertainment, the leading
contender to take the Republican nomination for the Senate in
Connecticut.
A long record in business is not always a benefit in a year when the
state of corporate America is almost as woeful as that of government.
Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, has fended off questions about her
former role as a director of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment
bank that has been sued for fraud by the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Fiorina's stormy tenure as the head of Hewlett-Packard
included sending jobs overseas and ended with her ouster in 2005.
As for McMahon, the YouTube record of her hands-on management style in
the ring -- which includes a memorable scene in which she gets slapped
by her daughter -- is an oppo researcher's dream.
And for all their claims to be careful stewards of a dollar, many CEOs-
turned-politicians often are freewheeling with their campaign budgets.
In fact, what initially draws some executives to politics, and vice
versa, is their ability to finance a bid for office out of their own
checking accounts. That's not exactly the safest of investments, given
that self-financed candidates almost always lose.
With so many executives running in 2010, "it's a good year to be a
media buyer," deadpans Bloomberg's longtime political strategist,
Kevin Sheekey.
Whitman has already shattered all spending records in California,
having shelled out $71 million of her money to win the primary against
Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a former Silicon Valley
entrepreneur who had chipped in $24 million of his.
She insists that the investment has been a judicious one, part of a
plan that also includes "laying pipe" for her general-election battle
against former governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. (D), who has spent
most of his life in politics. "We are on budget, on strategy," Whitman
said. "The difference, of course, is this is money we have raised from
people who voluntarily want to invest in my campaign, as well as money
I have invested in the campaign. So it is not taxpayers' money."
CEOs, used to getting their way and having underlings jump at their
commands, can be ill-equipped for the slow, frustrating grind of
politics: the go-nowhere meetings; the vote wrangling; the years to
get the simplest thing done. Not to mention an end to the privacy they
enjoyed behind their hedges in the Hamptons.
"It's a whole different language," said longtime Democratic consultant
Tad Devine. "Many of them do get exasperated." As so many have learned
the hard way, that often leaves voters feeling the same way about
them.
[Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061005502.html