So, California Democrats are calling Carly Fiorina “a failed CEO.” California Democrats know a lot about failures, failure to balance the budget, failure to stand up to public employee unions, failure to hold the line on taxes. Failure to prevent businesses from leaving the state and taking jobs with them.
And if they think Carly’s a failed CEO, wait till they take a look at Barbara Boxer’s record in the Senate. But, first, let’s look at Carly’s. HP’s revenues more than doubled during her tenure there (from $39.3 billion the year before she took over to $86.7 billion when she left). She helped create the conditions for HP to become the world’s largest technology company and the world leader in PC sales.
Meanwhile, the woman Carly seeks to replace, Ma’am Babara Boxer has spent 17 years in the Senate, but only gotten three laws enacted. Not just that, even though she was elected during a recession, she has seen unemployment in the Golden State increase by 33% since she first took office in 1993. And since she voted in February for the “stimulus,” saying it was needed to save or create jobs, 336,400 jobs have disappeared from her jurisdiction. Kind of sounds like a failure to me.
Not much of a record to run on. No wonder her minions in Sacramento are attacking her likely opponent. Hey, Ma’am, let me tell you something, your gutter politics may have worked in 1992 and 1998, but they won’t be effective this time. Just take a look at New Jersey when Jon Corzine (kind of a Barbara Boxer in a beard) tried just that tack this time. And though he outspent his Republican opponent three to one, Garden State voters ousted him from office.
Ma’am, you’ve been in office 17 years. And today, in a world where the MSM has far less power than it did in the 1990s, we bloggers are going to do something the California media has failed to do, hold you to account for your record. You haven’t gotten anything done these past 17 years while the citizens you were elected to represent keep losing their jobs.
And that’s why you should lose yours.
Whoa, whoa, flag on the play. Didn’t that doubling of revenues come from the merger of HP and Compaq, that most analysts thought was horribly mishandled? Didn’t HP stock jump 8% the day Fiorina resigned? And didn’t Fiorina once, within the same week, give millions of dollars of HP’s money to a gay rights group while laying off hundreds of employees?
Maybe she’d be better than Boxer, but there are legitimate criticisms to be made of her tenure at HP. I’ve read many articles criticizing her as shallow, driven by buzzwords, and overhyped; which in many ways makes her ideal for politics. Still, I can’t get that excited about the prospect of a west coast Olympia Snowe-clone. The National GOP should very carefully consider how much money to pour into California if there are other senate races that are more promising. I’m thinking that the cost of financing one campaign in California would pay for 4-5 campaigns in other states.
Hmm, as I remember it, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican. The only one who takes money from gay Republicans and the only one who doesn’t mind being seen with the LCR, at that. I suppose it’s no wonder you’re blaming California’s ills on Democrats when the governor (read: chief executive, leader, most powerful person in the state) is a member of your party.
I will also say that I am quite surprised at the degree to which you can compartmentalise your thinking. You are gay, the Republican party has demonstrated it’s opposition to you being yourself for decades in all manner of cruel ways, and yet you seemingly file this fact away at the back of your head so you can continue to be one of the strongest supporters of the Republican party I can imagine. Likewise, California is headed by a REPUBLICAN governor, and has been for almost 7 years and yet you can file this fact away at the back of your head so you can lay blame entirely with the Democrats. How strange.
So let’s see. You railed against Dede Scozzafava because she was a secret liberal – she supported the stimulus and some other moderate proposals.
But Carly Fiorina also supports such propoals…
She supports Cap and Trade
She supported the bailouts
http://hoguenews.com/?p=5701
But you urge folks to support her becuase you think she has seen the light and now is actually a conservative. What gives? Are you giving up on even attempting to be consistant?
Or did the NY-23 election show you that your conservative ideology is too small and indeed its time to start moderating the Republican Party?
If its the latter, great! Welcome aboard the liberal train. You are a few steps away from becoming a Blue Dog Dem.
Indeed, I too am puzzled by the villification of Scozzafava (even though she was a Republican that supported gay rights – a extreme rarity in the U.S. congress) on some vague fiscal basis and yet you endorse Carly Fionia? What gives?
I agree, Fiorina was not the greatest CEO. Not the worst either. Just by having been in business, she is likely to be a far better Senator than Boxer, that I agree is an abject failure. But playing defense on Fiorina’s CEO record is probably not the way to go. For one thing, it keeps it “the subject”. Better to change the subject to (1) the abjectness of Boxer’s failures, and (2) Fiorina’s plans for ending the problems caused by the Democrats, and by government generally. (In which category I include unemployment.)
If it means I don’t have to ever see Boxer speak on C-SPAN again, yeah it’s worth it. I’ll take another Snowe over a Boxer any day of the week…
I rarely say this, but gillie makes a good point. I would vote against her in the primary if she supports cap-and-trade legislation. However, against Boxer I’d voter for her.
I think my more salient point was one of resources. There’s only so much RNSC money to go around, and California is a very expensive state to campaign in. Should the GOP pour resources into CA to help a moderate defeat a liberal, when for the same money, they could help elect GOP senators in CT, NV, PA, and maybe CO?
That’s fair. I stay with the Boxer, CA angle from being a resident. My mind is not made up in favor of Fiorina because I still want to look at her primary opponents.
No gillie – Not at all secret. Come on, catch up in your news by 2 weeks.
And your Dear Leader’s bailouts and so-called “stimulus” are destroying what’s left of our economy, not to mention the historic, unprecedented, criminal ripoff of the American people that they represent. I’m 6 inches from taking a stand that anyone who supported it (as Scuzzyfavor did) should be shot.
Sorry, meant to link this: http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091102/NEWS03/311029965/0/FRONTPAGE
WOW. I didn’t quite expect the Boxer campaign to attack this quite so soon.
On the criticism of
Please tell me what company Olympia Snow ever ran. And to bolster what someone else has said, Fiorina, when compared to Boxer, looks more like Strom Thurmond.
Before I go on, let me preface by identifying myself as a tech-head…. A Complete Nerd!!! Used to go to the huge technology show Com-Dex, held in Vegas every year until it folded in 2002. Used to go to the Linux World convention… until it folded last year (interesting to note that both died due to bad economic periods, and changing economic pressures). The HP Compaq merger was legendary on a massive scale for me and the much smarter / even techier Sonic-Mate. We hung on every twist and turn of the merger soap opera – the fights within the boardroom, Carly’s eventual victory in winning them over, the battles with one of the original Hewlett’s, who was dead set against the idea, and who tried to stage a shareholders revolt to stop the deal. . Again, Carly eventually won. If I can find our old Casio Cassiopeia 115, PDA, we probably still have a few of the article written about this as it happened.
Carly Fiorina’s big accomplishment was indeed, as most here know, the acquisition / merger of Compaq Computers by her company HP. This was no small feat – she risked her up-till-then sterling career and reputation on it. She succeeded with the merger, but later got the boot when thing weren’t coming together well two years into the merger. In Fiorina’s defense, there are now several case studies use in economics course based on the HP / Compaq merger to teach about. the complexities of large mergers. The consensus of all the studies show that Fiorina’s gamble was indeed the correct one and was good for HP. They also point out that this was one of the largest mergers between two established tech giants, which made the integration of the two corporate structures very very difficult. That said, there is valid criticism of the way that Fiorina managed the company after the merger. In a nutshell, she wanted to create a company that would compete in product and structure with the big boy, IBM. The merger gave HP too many similar products, and Carly never got a grip on how to differentiate between the HP product and the Compaq product. As a result sales were still lackluster two years after the merger. The board of HP has lust its patience, and she was asked to step down. Here is a pretty good write-up of the outster.
Knowing in some detail the situation behind the HP deal, I don’t think it has to be an albatross around Fiorina’s neck. It will be interesting to see how she handles it.
Dan, I’ll be emailing something related to you soon.
#9
“I’m 6 inches from taking a stand that anyone who supported it (as Scuzzyfavor did) should be shot”
So are you calling for Carly Fiorina to be shot?
Typical senseless remark from gillie.
– I haven’t called for anyone to be shot. (Yet.)
– I’ve indicated skepticism about Fiorina.
Reading comprehension, gillie. Reading comprehension.
Um, DavyG, you’re forgetting one big thing: California has a Democratic legislature and he never veoted its big-spending bills.
And please, if you’re going to keep bringing up your broadsides on the GOP, back them up with facts and not left-wing boilterplate.
And gillie you’re wrong; Carly’s GOP opponent may be trying to make a Dede out of her, but he doesn’t have the facts to make his case, only his longing to make the GOP primary fight into something he can win by branding Carly as something she isn’t.
And please, gillie, address the point of the post about Mrs. Boxer’s failed record in the US Senate.
And Davy, you wouldn’t be puzzled about our criticisms of Scozzafava if you read our posts. And please don’t rely on gillie for facts because he’s always wrong.
I have my doubts about how well a CEO will do as a Senator, compared to someone who has already worked in a legislature environment. The business world and the government world are two different beasts, and I think its a common folly to think a great business person is going to be a great government offical.
W Bush was pushed as a “CEO in Chief” and its arguable that he never ran the country like a business. Carly might be better suited to an executive role, like Governor but I am not sure if her skill set is suited to being a senator.
Sure it will be a fun race to watch.