Carly Fiorina - A Bad Choice For Senator

The choice for California Senate to replace Barbara Boxer seat ought to be a simple choice. Boxer has been an embarrassment in the Senate for a long time now, and in a year trending Republican she looks beatable even in California, with poll ratings in the low forties, normally a death knell for an incumbent.

It's her opponents who are problematical.There are three Republicans vying for the chance to square off against Boxer; Tom Campbell, the front runner,Carly Fiorina, the ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard and Assemblyman Chuck Devore, the most conservative of the three.

I've already detailed Tom Campbell's questionable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, something that ought to disqualify him utterly either on the basis of ideology or lousy judgment.

It turns out that Carly Fiorina has some interesting details in her past as well.

Rabbi Dov Fisher has an excellent and well sourced piece on his site that goes into a number of them:

Carly Fiorina is quasi-accomplished. For a time, she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard. On the other hand, she was booted out. The Hewlett-Packard Board paid her $42 million to leave immediately: $21 million in immediate payout and another $21 million in stock options. As news of her ouster reached Wall Street on the day she was removed from H-P, the company's stock shares rose more than ten percent in a matter of hours! Is this the best the GOP can offer Californians as an alternative to Boxer?

During her H-P tenure, Hewlett-Packard shares dropped 49% in value. She laid off more than 20,000 H-P employees and outsourced tens of thousands of American jobs overseas, cruelly stating: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." See, e.g., Los Angeles Times, Aug. 6, 2008. Rich Heintz, editor of California Job Journal, wrote responsively in the San Francisco Chronicle: "This Marie Antoinette-inspired remark makes me wonder if HP hasn't already offshored its public relations department." When President George W. Bush briefly contemplated naming Fiorina (after her ouster), to head the World Bank, the Times of London pleaded against rewarding failure. {...}

So what does Carly Fiorina believe? Does she understand the challenges in the Middle East? Does she understand Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas? Can she see through the "rhetoric of peace" that Nasrallah or Ahmedinejad, Abbas or Assad may articulate in an English-language interview with Reuters -- and understand that the same person's Arabic interview with Al Jazeera is more telling? Does she "get" the dangers we face in the coming decade, as Iran assures us that they are not building a nuclear weapon -- even as they continue building?

I have become increasingly interested in and concerned with that question after seeing how many times her name has been cited with approval on websites and blogs dedicated to causes that oppose Israel and call for Israel's destruction. Just "Google" the search term: "Fiorina and Islam." On an Al Jazeera website, in an article titled “Islam – The Answer,” the executive director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee writes:

"In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, addressing an IT conference in Minnesota, extolled the importance of innovation and ideas to the technology industry she represents. She spoke of a civilization whose language became the universal language of much of the world; whose multicultural armies enabled peace and prosperity; whose commerce extended from the Americas to China and who, driven by invention, gave humanity the gifts of ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithms’. The society cured disease, carried out complicated surgical operations such as the removal of cataracts, and laid the foundations for modern medicine and physiology. Whilst most of the world was steeped in ignorance, fearful of ideas, this civilization kept knowledge alive and passed it on to others. That civilization, she told her audience, was the Islamic civilization up until the 17th century."

That speech’s full text is set forth on another website. These are Fiorina's words spoken only two weeks after 9-11:

"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.

"It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.

"One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.

"And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.

"Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

"When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.

"While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

"Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians." {...}

Carly Fiorina has made a career of trying to sell American business products to the Arab Islamic world. For that, she seems to have hit the right note, echoing the peaceful sounds of the cicadas at grandma's home. Yet, even there, we have news reportage that deeply pains the conscience. For example, the San Jose Mercury News broke the story that, on Fiorina's watch, Hewlett-Packard furtively sidestepped American government restrictions on trade with Iran and sold hundreds of millions of dollars of high-tech equipment to Iran through a Mideast distributor they quietly lined up.

Read the whole thing.

At this point, both Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum have endorsed Carly Fiorina for the nomination, and I actually understand why. As opposed to a conflicted candidate like Tom Campbell, she looks like a candidate just RINO enough to win in California while she's just conservative enough to be palatable.

I disagree with that kind of logic. It may pay short term benefits - may - but leads to long term disasters, in which case you get Arlen Spector...or worse. Far better to go with priciples and support Chuck DeVore.

The worst part is that either Fiorina or Campbell may actually end up getting the GOP nomination, at which point it's going to be a toss up between one of them or (ugh!) Babs Boxer. At that point, I'm going tohave some serious thinking to do.

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