Carly Fiorina: Strong and Wrong!

Image from source, Esquire

Well, Carly Fiorina did well the other night, didn't she? She kicked and screamed enough to get removed from the kiddie table debate, and into the proper (though "adult" doesn't sound right) one, making a nice. . .even?. . .eleven candidates. Or contestants. Whatever. But, she did it, she got in, and by all accounts, she actually won the thing.

But if you paid attention to what she said, she was just wrong all over the place. It won't matter. Why? Well, it's that whole, Republicans prefer strong and wrong over weak and right. So long as you believe what you're saying to your core--or at least express yourself as though you do--and espouse a few hard right ideas, you're golden baby. Attention Jeb!, Bobby and the rest: Get confident, stupid!

So, Carly can make stuff up about Hillary Clinton (ironically while accusing her of lying), or she can invent a fake--but horrific!--Planned Parenthood video, but if she stares at the camera like a cobra about to strike, while delivering the lie in a resolute, confident voice? Pure. Conservative. Gold.

It shouldn't surprise me, from a group that absolutely gobbles up "truthiness," fact-like nuggets that feel true, rather than are necessarily actually true. It explains perfectly the whole phenomenon of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and "sincerely held beliefs" that require no doctrine and no evidence.

And it contrasts rather sharply with Donald Trump's much coarser version of the same thing. Fiorina is the refined version, Trump the larval stage. Where he's got pure id, with a child's penchant for tantrums and flair with vocabulary, Fiorina is polished and refined. But don't mistake her strength and confidence for accuracy or honesty.

[Excerpt]

Carly Fiorina: Strong, Crisp, and Effective if You Ignore the Facts

Let us take one more tour of the battlefield before we retire to the gift shoppe at Ronnieworld to pick up some Fawn Hall Authorized Confetti (Guaranteed 100 percent Genuine Secret Government Documents!) or, perhaps, for the kids, a Junior TOW Missile Commander suit complete with Iranian flags on the sleeves. What we saw last night, and I stayed awake for the whole damn thing so I now know all I care to know about Chris Christie's secret crush on Abigail Adams, was the triumph of fiction over fact, of fantasy over reality. In other words, what we saw was the most fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan ever produced. Congratulations, one and all. The final fealty of the Republican Party to total and complete bullshit has been sworn. . .

Read more at: Esquire