Now Carly
Fiorina
tells us that she regards Jesse Jackson with reverence, and she actually
worked with Jesse
Jackson.
And how many
millions
of dollars did she authorize for Jesse Jackson when she was CEO at
Hewlett-Packard?
(Hint: at least $15 million) Yet,
minority business leaders themselves have been at the forefront of exposing
that Jackson took the money and ran, focusing more on shaking down
American corporations to
finance his Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH gambits than actually to help
African Americans, Latinos, and others gain access to meaningful employment
in the high-tech community.
California Republicans have to consider whether the state party needs a
candidate who is so wrong for us at such a critical time. Certainly, Ms.
Fiorina
will scare and drive Jewish conservatives away from the party base at a time
when we, perhaps more than other Californians, are so determined to see
Barbara Boxer – uh, “Senator” Barbara Boxer (she worked very hard for the
title, as we know) – returned to private life.
The Year 2010 is going to be a banner year throughout America for
Republicans. Republicans are positioned to take back Democrats' United
States Senate seats in Massachusetts, Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota,
Missouri, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Arkansas. New York may be in play, as
may be Connecticut. And even in California, the Democrat seat is waiting for
a GOP transition. California is reeling under the weight of three decades of
liberal experimentation, dating back primarily to the years that Jerry Brown
was governor (1975-1983) of California. This social experimentation has (i)
paralyzed efforts within California to identify and expand energy-producing
resources, (ii) granted
unions massive domination and rule over the state’s
governing process, and (iii) imposed
tax-and-spend theories and practices
that have driven wealth out of California in extraordinary numbers and at an
extraordinary pace.
From driving out profitable businesses under the weight of "Workers Comp
Gone Wild" and rising taxes and red-tape to
spending liberally on government
social services for illegal immigrants, California has subverted its envied
position on the American and world stage. Now California's tragic
social-engineering experiments have driven our Golden State, once the envy
of all America, into a
state that issues "I.O.U. drafts" because there is no
cash left to pay our bills. Not every Californian is positioned to identify
every underlying cause of the state's financial collapse from greatness, but
Californians know that Democrats have presided over the state's demise.
Against this socio-political
background,
Barbara
Boxer has been a particularly significant embarrassment to the state, a
remarkably ineffective representative
in Washington.
As of this writing, she has been locked in polls for half a year with a
statewide popularity rating of 46% --
a virtual
political
death sentence for an incumbent.
(Incumbents whose popularity numbers
plummet below 50% typically are defeated when an election ensues, as their
insurgent challengers
become known. Consider how Scott Brown picked
up 30 points in two months on the well known Massachusetts Attorney-General,
Martha Coakley, whom he
defeated for the "People's
Seat" in Massachusetts.)
The only reason that Boxer has lasted this long as a Senator -- three terms
and eighteen
years -- is that she has had a fascinating string of unbelievable good luck.
In 1992 she was elected to the U.S. Senate by fewer than five percentage
points, opposing a social conservative after a
last-minute revelation that
her formidable Republican opponent, Bruce
Herschensohn,
had attended a strip club. Her opponent never before had run an election
race. In 1998 she again lucked-out, as the Republicans ran Matt
Fong
against her. You may remember Matt
Fong
– not.
He had
no presence, no charisma, and merely was a nice enough fellow who had
been State Treasurer. If you are reading this, you could have beaten Matt
Fong.
And then more luck – the Republicans did it again in 2004, this time with
former California Secretary of State Bill Jones standing in the opposing
corner.
So Boxer has been in the U.S. Senate for eighteen years – three terms – by
the greatest run of good fortune, being opposed by candidates who would not
win. During those years, other major states have sent to Washington
legislative powerhouses like Hillary Clinton and Charles
Schumer
(New York), Barack Obama and Dick
Durbin
(Illinois), Ted Kennedy and John Kerry (Massachusetts), and California also
has sent a powerhouse representative, Dianne
Feinstein.
By contrast, Boxer – uh, Senator Boxer – stands out remarkably as the one
who remarkably does not stand out, except
when she embarrasses
herself and her constituents. Not to mention her 87 overdrafts,
which put her among those miscreants in the center of
the notorious House Bank Overdraft Scandal, leading her to tell the New
York Times that "in
painful retrospect, I clearly should have paid more attention to my account."
And now she reposes on the precipice of more luck. On the one hand, this
stands to be the year that Boxer gets knocked out of the ring -- and not
merely by a tepid TKO -- if
Republicans oppose Boxer with a
solid, politically experienced candidate with a proven record of effective
public service and a demonstrated commitment to sensible conservative
principles.
Chuck
DeVore
is exactly such a candidate.
By contrast, what a shame it would be for Republicans to lose this
opportunity if they instead present voters with a political novice whose own
record of disturbing naivete in the political arena, particularly on matters
pertaining to the Mideast, depresses the party's chances.
Carly
Fiorina
is quasi-accomplished. For a time, she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard. On the other hand,
she was
booted out. The Hewlett-Packard
Board paid her $42 million to leave immediately: $21 million in immediate
payout and another $21 million in stock options.
As news of
her ouster reached Wall Street on the day she was removed from H-P, the
company's stock shares
rose more than ten percent in a matter of hours!
Is this the best the GOP can offer Californians as an
alternative to Boxer?
During her
H-P tenure, Hewlett-Packard shares dropped 49% in value. She laid off
more than 20,000 H-P employees and outsourced tens of thousands of American jobs
overseas, cruelly stating: "There is no job that is America's God-given
right anymore." See, e.g., Los Angeles Times, Aug. 6, 2008. Rich Heintz,
editor of California Job Journal, wrote responsively in the San
Francisco Chronicle: "This
Marie Antoinette-inspired remark makes me wonder if HP hasn't already
offshored its public relations department." When President George W.
Bush briefly contemplated naming Fiorina (after her ouster), to head the World Bank, the Times of London pleaded against
rewarding failure.
Where in the world does
Fiorina
stand on issues? Well, for starters, she hardly ever votes on election days.
At least
Barack Obama, as an Illinois legislator, would show up to vote
"Present." Fiorina
never showed up to vote most years.
In the past decade, she voted only in 6
of 14 elections.
The prior decade,
she did not even vote at all.
She might as well have voted "Absent."
So where does she stand? Really -- where does she stand, in her heart,
in her mind (not in mere
emergency talking points written by political
professionals to
salvage her miscues
with
damage control)? What does she know about world affairs in this terribly
dangerous era, with America facing real threats from abroad?
Before we would elect a candidate to represent our views and beliefs in
Washington for the next six years, we need to know whom we are
contemplating. California Republicans have made mistakes like this before
when, dazzled by the lure of running a mega-wealthy candidate with a big
personal bankroll, the party ended up presenting California voters with an
embarrassment of major proportions.
Remember Michael
Huffington?
A one-term Congressional
representative, he put $28 million of his own money into his -- unsuccessful
-- run against Dianne
Feinstein in 1994.
In time, it emerged that his
political agenda was quite mixed, going both ways, and that his brave
conservative wife,
Arianna, also had a mixed agenda. From the dust
and shambles, we now have the
Huffington
Post, a radically liberal
internet
outlet. This is the price of a California Republican Party that runs
candidates whose commitment to core Republican principles remains untested.
We do not know this person,
Carleton S. Fiorina, and she
is hustling like crazy to stay one step ahead of us, the voters, who read a daily
paper or an internet
news site.
So what does Carly
Fiorina
believe? Does she understand the
challenges in the Middle East? Does she understand Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah
and Hamas?
Can she see through the "rhetoric of peace" that
Nasrallah
or Ahmedinejad,
Abbas or Assad may articulate in an English-language interview with Reuters
-- and understand that the same person's Arabic interview with
Al
Jazeera
is more telling?
Does she "get" the dangers we face in the coming decade, as
Iran assures us that they are not building a nuclear weapon -- even as they
continue building?
I have become increasingly interested in and concerned with that question
after seeing how many times her name has been cited with approval on
websites and blogs dedicated to causes that oppose Israel and call for
Israel's destruction. Just "Google" the search term: "Fiorina
and Islam." On an Al
Jazeera
website, in an article titled “Islam – The Answer,” the executive director
of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee writes:
"In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Carly
Fiorina,
CEO of Hewlett-Packard, addressing an IT conference in Minnesota, extolled
the importance of innovation and ideas to the technology industry she
represents. She spoke of a civilization whose language became the universal
language of much of the world; whose multicultural armies enabled peace and
prosperity; whose commerce extended from the Americas to China and who,
driven by invention, gave humanity the gifts of ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithms’.
The society cured disease, carried out complicated surgical operations such
as the removal of cataracts, and laid the foundations for modern medicine
and physiology. Whilst most of the world was steeped in ignorance, fearful
of ideas, this civilization kept knowledge alive and passed it on to others.
That civilization, she told her audience, was the Islamic civilization up
until the 17th
century."
That speech’s full text is set forth on another website. These are
Fiorina's
words spoken only two weeks after 9-11:
"There was
once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.
"It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to
ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion
lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic
origins.
"One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the
bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of
people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree
of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this
civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere
in between.
"And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its
architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians
created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of
computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human
body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the
heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and
exploration.
"Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and
magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in
fear to think of such things.
"When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them,
and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past
civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on
to others.
"While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the
civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to
1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus
and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.
"Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other
civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology
industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians."
Coming a mere
fortnight after
September 11, 2001, that gushing, excessively saccharine and
naively hagiographic overview of world events
suggests to Jews exactly the
kind of Republican we saw during the James Baker years.
Just consider her
words, her world view, reviewing her speech on the glory of Islam, line-by-line. Yes, Islam
created a super-state that stretched across nations, from ocean to ocean.
Does anyone besides Ms. Fiorina think that empire was built with
mathematical insights?
It was built with jihad and sword,
intimidation and
mass murder, mass beheadings and
forced conversions
of Jews and Christians.
How can she be so remarkably ignorant of the
abased and humiliated “dhimmi”
status under which people of “different creeds” and “ethnic origins” lived
within that orbit of Islam?
Nor can we attribute this ignorance to Jesse Jackson's influence on
Fiorina.
Fiorina's
starry-eyed infatuation with Islamic
civilization
and culture is all her own.
Speaking in Detroit on September 29, 2003,
before ultimately beseeching "[m]ay the wisdom of the Prophet Muhammad
inspire us,"
Fiorina said, inter alia:
* "The Islamic example has helped create a world where democracy and transparency and rule of law are empowering people and taking them to new heights."
* "I have not in my life heard a more eloquent speaker, or met a more committed person than Queen Rania of Jordan."
Queen Rania of Jordan, indeed, is deeply committed -- to attacking Israel. Even as she manipulates and is manipulated as a promotional weapon for whitewashing the second-class status of women throughout much of the Moslem world. The Queen attacked Israel for deaths during the war in Gaza that was prompted by incessant Hamas shelling of Israeli civilian centers in the communities of Sderot and Ashkelon. Australia Broadcasting Corp, transcript of interview, Jan. 6, 2009. She blames Israel for "human catastrophe" in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). United Press International, "Insider Notes," Apr. 17, 2002. She accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of "terrorizing the lives of many, many people" when Israel attempted to eradicate Jenin-centered terrorist bases in the West Bank. "Jordan's Queen Condemns Israeli Military Operation," Larry King Live (transcript), Apr. 15, 2002.
So Fiorina honestly is infatuated. In her book, reminiscing about her
high school days in Ghana, she begins:
"I remember hearing, for the first time, Muslims pray, and how over time their sound evolved from being frightening in its strangeness to comforting in its cadence and repetition -- I would feel the same peace when I listened to the sound of summer cicadas around my grandmother's house. I grew to love being awakened in the morning by the sound of the devout man who always came to pray under my bedroom window."
Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices (Penguin Group/ Portfolio, 2006), p. 7. Thus, "Fiorina's starry-eyed infatuation with Islamic civilization and culture" is not hyperbole but a dominant key to understanding her. And, indeed, there are many wonderful aspects that can be found in all civilizations. Of course there are. But how many Christians and Jews -- and others -- died, how many Christian and Jewish -- and other -- societies were subjugated, and how many other peoples effectively were enslaved, further persecuted, and deprived of self-determination as Suleiman achieved the empire that Fiorina extols with starry-eyed wistfulness:
"It was a civilization that was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins. One of its languages became the universal language of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. . . . Its writers created thousands of stories. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things."
Yes, and it was -- and still is --
a world where Christians were subjugated as second-class.
Even Jesse Jackson knows that Islam persecuted Jews horribly, unspeakably
so. Jews were forced by that world of Islamic
civilization
into ghettoes
(the "mellah"),
centuries before Hitler and the Nazis.
Moslem
children were taught to throw rocks and shoes at Jews. Jews' clothing was
regulated, down to the number of ells that Jews could wear in their turbans;
no Jew’s turban could be thicker, more impressive than a
Moslem’s.
Jews were forced to wear badges of shame. Jews had to get off their animals
if a Moslem
pedestrian passed by because no Jew could be above a
Moslem.
In the world of Islamic
civilization, it was illegal for a synagogue to
stand taller than a mosque. The
persecutions
and tortures were unbearable, and they continued for centuries throughout
the Arab-Islamic orbit. Is Ms.
Fiorina
seriously that naive? Where did she learn about the real world -- in a
college
philosophy class?
How do voters effectively overcome such a person's naivete all these decades
after Fiorina has been in public life, speaking to Arab financial powers
throughout the world and profiting handsomely for Hewlett-Packard and her other
interests from staking out a lifetime position of gushing approval of the
Arab world? Yes, she
has spoken out in gentle terms on the value that Arab women could add to
Arab economies if only the women were granted more rights. But she
never has spoken out on the subjugations of other social subgroups within
the Arab world -- Christians, Jews, Baha'i, Berbers, Baluchis.
If it takes ten minutes to drive to a polling booth, ten minutes to vote,
and ten minutes to drive back -- half an hour altogether -- that would mean
that Fiorina
had seven extra hours of spare time available to her life when she did not
vote on fourteen election days these past twenty years. In those seven
hours, she could have read
Norman
Stillman,
The Jews of Arab Lands. Or Bat
Ye'or,
The
Dhimmi:
Jews and Christians under Islam
(Associated University Presses, 1985). Or Bernard Lewis,
The Jews of Islam (Princeton University Press,
1984). Or Joan Peters,
From Time Immemorial
(Harper & Row, 1984).
Instead, Fiorina
praises the Arab
Islamist armies that were comprised of peoples
from other civilizations,
telling us that they brought peace. If Arab
Islamist
armies were made up of peoples from other
ethnicities,
it was by conscription,
compulsion, coercion, and subjugation
– like the Greeks and Romans forcing captives to fight in their armies
through subsequent adventures in other lands far from their native homes.
The Arab Islamist
military brought peace only as the Romans brought peace, as Genghis Khan
brought security, as the Nazis under Hitler and the Communists under Stalin
brought law-and-order, and as even the current mullahs of Iran offer peace
and security, as does
Hamas in Gaza.
Then there is
Ms.
Fiorina’s
paragraph extolling Arab writers who created thousands of stories, and Arab poets. Oh, for
goodness sakes, every
society that has words has stories ! What, then, is her point
-- a point she
was trying to make two weeks after 19 Arab
Moslems,
fifteen from Saudi Arabia, crashed aircraft into the World Trade Center,
another into the Pentagon, and had another en route towards Washington,
D.C.? What -- that Al Qaeda
may be rooted in terror, mortal hatred of the West, and a compelling desire
to destroy America . . . but at least they
have good stories? And they can rhyme? Well
. . .
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Christians also can compose poetry.
So can a Jew.
At some point, any serious analysis of Ms.
Fiorina’s strange,
infatuated
world view of Islam’s
contributions
to the West comes down to three words:
Gimme a break. And all this “when others
before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.”
So let us ask: And why were those
"others" so deeply "steeped in fear"? Whom were they fearing? For goodness
sakes, they were steeped in fear of "the poets." And of their weapons. And
their leaders’ weapons. And their jihads.
This really is ridiculous. Carly
Fiorina
has made a career of trying to sell American business products to the Arab
Islamic world. For that, she seems to have hit the right note, echoing the
peaceful sounds of the cicadas at grandma's home. Yet, even there, we have news
reportage that deeply pains the conscience. For example, the San Jose Mercury
News broke the story that, on
Fiorina's
watch, Hewlett-Packard furtively sidestepped American government
restrictions
on trade with Iran and sold hundreds of millions of dollars of high-tech
equipment to Iran through a Mideast distributor they quietly lined up.
For the United States Senate, of all places, her naivete is truly frightening at a time
when we need strong leadership to know who
Ahmedinejad,
Nasrallah
and other such tyrants are -- and the terrible dangers their regimes
represent to America, its values, and its future. She may --
or may not
-- be a suitable business leader for a company selling merchandise to the Arab
world. Perhaps she would make an adept member of our foreign service
attached to an American mission or embassy in
Dubai,
Abu Dhabi, or
Saudi Arabia. But she would be an unmitigated disaster for California Republicans
in the race against Boxer.
By contrast, we are offered the opportunity to support
Chuck DeVore, an
American patriot who served 24 years in the United States Army Reserve
before retiring recently from the Army National Guard with the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel. In the aftermath of Scott Brown's exciting victory
in Massachusetts, California Republicans
increasingly
are buoyed by the emergence of Chuck DeVore as a serious real Republican candidate for the seat.
DeVore
has been elected twice to the California State Assembly,
increasingly
emerging as a major
conservative thinker with
creative ideas to address serious problems. As California has faced terrible
budget crises, with few ideas from the political world but the usual
proposals to cut healthcare, education, and other important human services, while
increasing taxes, DeVore has studied alternatives to traditional oil
exploration and proposes that California consider slant-drilling off its
coast, which would bring in enormous millions in licensing fees while
dramatically minimizing adverse environmental impact. He has endorsed bold ideas for clean
nuclear energy. He is fiscally conservative and sensible,
compassionate yet aware of the limitations of runaway Big Government, having
seen and
fought against its
devastating excesses in Sacramento.
His record of
achievement and public service remarkably parallels many aspects of the
Scott Brown phenomenon: from the
two decades' service in the United States Army Reserve attaining the
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, to the
lonely years as a consistently principled voice in a State Assembly
dominated by a majority Democrat Party that has driven the state to the
brink of bankruptcy, to the down-to-earth campaign that has seen him driving
his own vehicle up-down-and-all-throughout the state to address enthusiastic
crowds eager to end the "same-old same-old" game of political musical chairs
by which party insiders seek to make back-door political deals to assign a
United States Senate seat that belongs not to them but to the people of the
State of California.
On national security, DeVore would not permit terrorists like the Nigerian
"underwear bomber," who tried to commit a horror in the skies above Detroit,
to be coddled by civilian attorneys in civilian legal procedures who
immediately advise their clients of "Miranda rights" and to refuse
to talk to national security officials. Rather, Chuck DeVore would have terrorists
tried within the military legal-justice arena, a concept so sensible in
dealing with terrorists who are at war with America. On Middle East issues,
he has written a
deeply
contemplative analysis, reflecting unusually intense and direct
experience and awareness. Perhaps no other United States Senator or
other national political representative has written more thoughtfully, from
personal experience and observation, on the Middle East from his own pen.
He knows the Middle East, has lived and studied there, knows the Arab world
and knows Israel.
DeVore has raised more than $1.2 milion in campaign funds
from more than 20,000 donors who have come to support him through his
website at
http://www.chuckdevore.com/
. He has been
endorsed by United States Senator Jim DeMint, almost 60% of
all California elected Republicans including Congressional Representative
Tom McClintock, and a wide range of traditional California Republican
advocates. Perhaps this effort and lineup help explain why DeVore
is running
neck-and-neck with his two opponents in the GOP primary, as pollsters like
Rasmussen Reports gauge relative strength in the line-ups against Boxer.
In the aftermath of Scott Brown's come-from-nowhere victory, from 30 points
behind, over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Chuck DeVore emerges for
serious California Republican voters as a
profoundly viable, deeply serious
candidate who can defeat the pretenders in the GOP primary, then surge from
that round to defeat Barbara Boxer in November. We need the
commonsense ideas and practical hands-on knowledge of world affairs, the
demonstrated patriotism, and creative solutions to economic challenges at
home that Chuck DeVore offers.