In Praise of Carly Fiorina

There is a brief story by Jim Carlton in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled “Fiorina Stays Away from Middle Road,” and in the cover story for the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes describes Carly Fiorina’s campaign against Barbara Boxer as “the most important race of 2010.”

I am not sure that I agree with the extravagant claim advanced by Barnes. But if Fiorina does, in fact, put an end to Boxer’s career, his assertion might well prove to be right – for, as Barnes shows in detail, the title of Carlton’s story is apt.

Carly Fiorina is not a squish. She is anti-abortion, and she makes no bones about the fact that she thinks Roe v. Wade a travesty. She is hostile to Obamacare, and she wants it repealed. She thinks that a tax increase at this time would be counter-productive, and she means to stop it. She thinks the deficit a threat to American prosperity and power, and she intends to see to its reduction. She favors offshore drilling, and she supports Arizona’s attempt to stop illegal immigration. She does not pander; she does not retreat. She makes her case. And if she wins – and she may well win – in California of all places, it really will be the occasion of a political earthquake. More important, from my perspective, even if she loses, we win.

If our aim were a mere partisan victory, my claim would be ridiculous. A vote in the Senate is, after all, a vote in the Senate. But if there is something more at stake – if a partisan victory predicated on an abandonment of principle is a devastating, demoralizing defeat – then it is far, far better to lose a close race while making a principled argument, as Abraham Lincoln did in his senatorial campaign against Stephen Douglas in Illinois in 1858, than it is to win by way of cowardice, collapse, and compromise.

To grasp what I mean one must look beyond November.

There are three vitally important states in the Union in which the Republicans are unlikely to make a great deal of headway this year. I have in mind Illinois, New York, and California. They have this in common. They are controlled by the Democratic Party, and that party is, in turn, controlled by the public-sector unions. They are, moreover, on the verge of bankruptcy, as one might expect. To float its bonds on the international market, Illinois has to pay more interest than does Mexico – and New York and California are not much nearer to solvency. Things are bad in these three states, and they are going to get worse – much, much worse.

Carly Fiorina may lose in November. But, no matter what happens in three weeks, the argument that she makes now will prevail in the aftermath, for what she has to say will in very short order be recognized as true. There really is no free lunch; one cannot pay oneself by printing money; and sooner or later one must pay the piper. Or to put it as Margaret Thatcher once did, the trouble with socialism is that sooner or later one runs out of other people’s money. And that day will come when the bluest of the blue states can no longer service their debt and sell their bonds.

In a sense, either way Carly Fiorina wins. If she wins the office, it will be by winning the argument. If she loses the office, simply by dint of making the argument forcefully she will in time – and the time is short – win the argument.

As Lincoln put it in one of his debates with Douglas, “In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”

This is what Fiorina is up to, and she deserves our admiration and support.