Who’s hot and who’s not this week in Campaign 2016?
Carly Fiorina: Very hot.
At the Reagan Library on Tuesday, Carly Fiorina delivered a 30 minute tour de force on foreign and defense policy, including a withering critique of the Obama Administration’s international perfidy and Hillary Clinton’s complicity, with rich detail of how Ms. Fiorina would act as president on the world stage.
At times, she channeled Ronald Reagan’s soaring rhetoric, while respecting his 11th commandment to speak no ill of another Republican, reserving her fire for Democrats.
Her best line on Hillary: “And let us not forget our former Secretary of State, who told us that her private server was protected from hacking because she had two Secret Service agents guarding it [laughter]. We were not worried about your server being stolen, Mrs. Clinton, although perhaps you were. We were worried about it being hacked, or worse being used as a back door to hack into the State Department system, which is exactly what appears to have happened at OPM.”
Then there was this: “It is the height of hypocrisy for Mrs. Clinton to run for president as a champion of women’s rights when her record as Secretary of State is so dismal.”
Fiorina: “I see our nation at a crossroads. Margaret Thatcher — a woman I admire greatly — once said that she was not content to manage the decline of a great nation. Neither am I. I am prepared to lead the resurgence of a great nation.” She returned to this theme at her close: “I know what … leadership requires. I will recognize dangers with eyes wide open. But I will also embrace with open arms the enormous potential of these amazing times. I am prepared to be a president who leads the resurgence of this great nation, both here at home and around the world.”
Republican primary voters are looking for a fighter — someone to aggressively press the case against the failed policies of the past seven years and liberalism’s lack of promise for the future. Both Ted Cruz and Scott Walker have laid claim to his mantle, but Carly Fiorina is the real deal.
Fiorina’s hot this week. So who is not? Jeb Bush, now facing the heat for having served on the board of the Bloomberg Family Foundation while it was funding the Planned Parenthood International campaign to export abortion across the globe. For sitting on the board of an organization spending $50 million to “augment the advocacy” of abortion in Africa, this week Bush is so not-hot.
Steve Wagner is president of QEV Analytics, a public opinion research firm, and a senior fellow at the American Principles Project.
