NO, THE REPUBLICANS WON'T LEARN ANYTHING IF THEY LOSE A THIRD STRAIGHT ELECTION

With so many Republican candidates griping about the anchors of the last debate, how is Carly Fiorina supposed to distinguish herself from the rest of the field? By complaining about being the victim of another instance of media bias:

Carly Fiorina is daring the hosts of “The View” to insult her to her face.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Fiorina ripped the hosts of the show, calling the liberal feminists and saying they are threatened by her.

She also said there was a double standard after two hosts of “The View” described her as wearing a Halloween mask at last week’s debate, saying the comment would hever have been made about Hillary Clinton.

“There is nothing more threatening to the liberal media in general and to Hillary Clinton in particular than a conservative women. So of course there’s a double standard,” she said.

“And conservative women from Sarah Palin to Michele Bachmann to Carly Fiorina are long used to this”

Fiorina also dared the show’s hosts to bring her back and make the same comments to her face.

“It will not stop me, it will not scare me and maybe the ladies of ‘The View’ if I come on again, let’s see if they have the guts to say that to my face,” she said.

During a segment of their program on Thursday, “View” host Michelle Collins noted Fiorina’s comment during the debate that people told her she should have smiled more.

“She looked demented,” Collins said of the smile that Fiorina then made on the stage.

Co-host Joy Behar then said that there should be a Fiorina Halloween mask.

I actually agree that this View segment went over the line -- you can see bits of it in the clip below, along with the Fiorina's response -- but it's not as if it's going to decide the election. I'm struck by the fact that Fiorina is responding to it personally. It's the sort of thing subordinates are supposed to respond to, not candidates. Then again, maybe I'm thinking of Democrats or old-school Republicans, not modern Republicans, who, to their voters, seem most presidential when they're carefully nursing grievances, not rising above them.



The key point you should take away from this, and from all the grumbling about CNBC, is that if Republicans lose a third straight election, they're not going to examine what they did in the campaign and conclude that they made mistakes that cost them the White House. No -- they're already preparing to blame defeat on liberal media bias. GOP voters will still be angry at John Harwood and Joy Behar (and, presumably, a number of other media villains) long after non-GOP voters have forgotten the moments that so incensed the right in the fall of 2015. Conservatism can't fail -- it can only be failed -- so this will be the reason for the loss, not the Republican candidate or agenda or rhetoric. There will be no learning. And we'll go through this all over again in four years.