Political devotees and insiders all seem convinced that Carly Fiorina is only running for vice president. Big-donor types say it. Consultants say it. Members of the media say it. Grassroots activists say it. Republicans of all stripes, and all kinds of people who cover them and opine on them, say it.Really? Here's a segment from Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show titled "Is Rubio Really Running for Vice President?" Here's Hot Air's Allahpundit theorizing that John Kasich "is really eyeing the VP slot by talking up his presidential odds." Here's a Blue Nation Review post titled "Is Martin O'Malley Running to Be Vice President?" Here's an opinion column at Pennsylvania's Lancaster Online titled "Santorum for Vice President? That Just Might Be His Goal."
And they’re all wrong.
The widespread idea that Carly has set her sights on the VP slot is both irritating and eyebrow raising, especially when it’s voiced by women’s-advancement-oriented female devotees of the word “feminism.”
... in countless conversations about her and the field at large, I have yet to hear a single person say of any male candidate that they are “only running for vice president.”
But it's true that Fiorina seems to get this more than most. Fox's Chris Wallace asked her if she's running for VP. So did Katie Couric of Yahoo News. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line wrote a post titled "Carly Fiorina to Run for President and Pusue the Vice Presidency." The Nation's Michelle Goldberg wrote "Carly Fiorina Is Running to Be 2016’s Sarah Palin.'
I agree with Mair: It's sexist to argue that Fiorina's delusions are any different from those of Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, or anyone else who's running despite being, like her, at 1% or 2% at the polls.
But that doesn't mean she's a plausible nominee. Mair insists that she is plausible, in part for this reason:
... more than any other actual or prospective candidate, she is focusing her energy and her firepower on the woman everyone expects to be the actual Democratic nominee -- Hillary Clinton....Yes, but Fiorina doesn't seem to be doing anything else. She doesn't seem to want to be president of the United States -- it looks as if she wants to be President of HillarySucksistan.
Carly is the only Republican consistently, day in and day out, showing that she can take the fight to Hillary, which of course will be one of the nominee’s central tasks.
My first impression of her campaign wasn't that it was a campaign for president or vice president -- it was that, as a candidate, she's like the one female member of a rich accused rapist's defense dream team, the attorney whose principal role is to do a really vicious cross-examination of the victim, because that would come of as sexist if a man did it.
That seems to be what Republican insiders see as useful in her campaign. Fiorina may have bigger ambitions -- but she's campaigning as if she's no more than a role-player. Does she have a vision larger than "Hillary is the Antichrist"? If so, we never see it. Then again, I don't know what the hell Jeb Bush's vision is, except "It's my turn now." So she's just as implausible a president as he is, and just as implausible as most of the males in the field.
