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Dear Carly, Dear Scott?
About an hour ago, I received a personal e-mail from Carly Fiorina, brightly addressed to “Claire,” and sent to an e-mail address I don’t usually share, seeing as I try to keep at least one of them spam-free:
I wrote back:
Carly,
While I welcome your entry into the GOP contest and am looking forward to hearing more from you, I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on national security before committing to your campaign. Since you’re the only candidate who has thus far found this e-mail address and contacted me, I suspect you’d have an interesting perspective, in particular, on cyber-security.
Perhaps I could interview you and chat with you about this. I’m an editor of Ricochet.com, the most cordial website for cordial conservative conversation on the Internet. Our members would be delighted to have you join us and discuss your campaign. We’d be pleased, in fact, to offer you an introductory month of free membership.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Claire Berlinski
Senior Fellow for Turkey, American Foreign Policy Institute,
Author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,
Ricochet.com
PS: Generally, I would address you as Ms. Fiorina. I’m old-fashioned. But since we’re already on a first name basis, I’ll follow your lead.
I thought no more of it, until the next one showed up, ten minutes later:
It came to the same e-mail address. That’s strange, I thought. We’re on a first name basis? I can’t call him “Scott,” can I? That would just be inappropriate. After fretting a bit about it, I wrote back.
Dear Governor Walker,
While I welcome your entry into the GOP contest and am looking forward to hearing more from you, I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on foreign policy and national security before committing to your campaign.
Perhaps I could chat with you about this. I’m an editor of Ricochet.com, the most cordial website for cordial conservative conversation on the Internet. Our members would be delighted to have you join us and discuss this issue. We’d be pleased, in fact, to offer you an introductory month of free membership.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Claire Berlinski
Senior Fellow for Turkey, American Foreign Policy Institute,
Author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,
Ricochet.com
Then I realized I’d forgotten to give them the coupon code for their free first month. It’s JOIN. I don’t want to bother them; I’m sure they’re busy, so I’ll just add this here, in case they stop by.
If you haven’t joined yet, of course, now’s your chance: same deal I offered Carly and … Scott.
Anyway, I hope they’ll join us. Please extend a warm Ricochet welcome to them both in case they do.
Published in Elections, General
I expected you to write about Mrs. Fiorina’s rather unpleasing answer on vaccines! It turns out, the parents should decide, but the schools could sort-of-expel the kids if they do not vaccinate. I did not like the song & dance.
We can ask her when she joins us. I just don’t feel prepared yet to lend my support to any candidate who isn’t willing to discuss these things on Ricochet, like an adult.
I’m sorry I stopped there–I realize it sounds churlish: I meant to say, the title recalled to mind this article…
Sure, you’re right about the discussion part. Let’em come, all artful dodgers…
At least you can tell what Jeb!’s foreign policy views are. The man’s moving & underwhelming, underwhelming & moving. I wonder if he thinks there’s an electoral majority to be won by blandness–when no one’s looking, as it were…
As for Gov. Walker’s letter: What an awful way to begin. I guess people might pay for the privilege of being angry…
This really is the perfect venue for a genuine debate between a few of the candidates. There are a few I find acceptable and I’d vote for the dog catcher vs HRC but it would wonderful to see reasoned, intelligent arguments in the vein of the Rubio interview from the best folks. Carly, Walker, Rubio, Cruz maybe Kasich. Anyone who is just trying to get a better deal on TeeVee or other ulterior motive I don’t care about but it makes me sad to assume Carson is in that group.
Wow! You mean you will offer any old stranger off the street the same great deal as you would to two Republican Presidential candidates! Now that is a good deal. Why a reader would have to be crazy to pass that up.
But wait there is more. If you sign up for Ricochet in the next 45 minutes I will personally send you a virtual hug. Guaranteed to make you feel better, virtually. Remember this is a limited time offer, and it can all be yours for one low payment of 39.99 (rounded up) a year.
Join today!
Warning: Long and interesting conversations may lead to lack of sleep, changed opinions, existential crisis about the human condition, and development of sound philosophical and political theories. Do not use Ricochet if you are excessively liberal, hate freedom or America, can’t stand being challenged on your core political beliefs which you picked up from a pamphlet in collage one day, or have trouble expressing yourself in fully formed sentences. Do not walk, run, or drive while on Ricochet. Do not try to implement the political philosophies of libertarian Ricocheti as they may lead to civilizational collapse. In some rare instances Ricochet has been known to contain Intelligent Design and Young Earth Creationism.
Claire:
I’m not as cordial as you. I block these emails and delete them for good. It’s worked so far. But I might now follow your lead and invite them to Ricochet. We’ve been looking for a better debate format. What’s better than Ricochet?
A direct hit?
Carly was on a flagship podcast with the gang not long ago, but I’d love to hear her again, and read something written by her here. She wasn’t as compelling on the podcast as she was at the debate, but now she seems to be hitting her stride. I like her a lot. I’m getting her emails and while I have yet to donate, I’m not deleting things out of hand yet.
She sent an email the other day that I thought was excellent – at the top was a photo of all the 10 guys in the evening debate, with the question “What’s missing in this picture?” You immediately thought the answer would be “No women there!”
But no. You scrolled down, and the answer was “The only CEO of a Fortune 20 company and the candidate with the best plan for our country’s future is missing. Carly Fiorina wasn’t on that stage.”
No playing the Female Card. I like that.
This reminds me of when we would get calls from telemarketers at dinner time when I was young. My mother would try to sell them her car.
“They didn’t even let me finish my sales pitch!” She would exclaim as they hung up on her.
Claire, you should invite Donald Trump to Ricochet. ;-)
Love your mother already and I don’t even know her!
Trump already shared his thoughts on this with me.
“That Rob Long is a loser. What has he ever done in show business? I was the star of the apprentice, and the ratings were YUUUUGE. I should be running Ricochet. I would hire the best nerds to build the website. It would be so classy and luxurious. Wall to wall 24k gold. I can afford that because I’m so rich. People don’t even understand how rich I am.”
“I’d run Ricochet, and I’d make Rob Long PAY for it!”
He hasn’t written to me yet. I will if he does.
I like your mom.
Phrasing…
It wouldn’t be unprecedented if he decided to show up and post. After all, Rupert Murdoch was once a Ricochet member.
He may have trouble following the CoC, but as long as he does, he’s perfectly welcome. First month on the house.
I hope those are the real sites soliciting donations.
Well if my daughter didn’t have a soccer game tomorrow I’d be meeting them both and name dropping,” yeah I know Claire. And stuff”. But my visions of bonding ( and photo opping ) over a nice bowl of lamb testicle stew have been thwarted by parenthood.
This is starting to feel like watching the bartender at the Ricochet hotel trying hard not to be judgmental, but spending a bit too much time polishing glasses & throwing the rag around from shoulder to shoulder…
Ain’t Murdoch an investor in Ricochet? Why do I remember that from somewhere?
An anomaly has been detected in your frame of mind algorithm during our recent visit. Please report to Pod C for
proper evaluation.
If the Donald joins, I will never stop laughing.
I can’t wait for you to hear from Donny.
Missed Opportunity Alert: I was in Concord NH the other day, doing an author appearance at Gibson’s Bookstore. Main Street was swarming with busy young men in dark suits and maybe a half dozen middle-aged men standing around looking competent and presidential. They were wearing dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up, ready to Get To Work.
Turns out one of the latter was John Kasich. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell which one. And I was a little worried about finding the venue for the author appearance, so I didn’t stop to enquire.
Next time, though, I’ll definitely buttonhole Kasich (or whomever) and tell him about that First Month Free deal…
“Percival is a joke. What has he ever done? He sat at the round table with a bunch of more important knights. Percival is a loser. He ended up replaced by Galahad, who was a winner. Lancelot was a winner too. He was the best knight, and he bagged the queen. That’s what winners do. I only hire the best knights for my round table. It’s made of mahogany. One solid piece, 24 feet long. They needed to use a crane to get it into my conference room.”
Losers go home. Winners go home and join Ricochet.
“You should have heard Max begging me- BEGGING me to give him a job. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Then this guy comes around and starts insulting me like he didn’t take my money. Let me tell you something folks, if you pay max, he’ll do anything. He came to my wedding because I told him to. You just show him some money and you can own Max. Then he starts criticizing my position on Iran…let me tell you, I’ve dealt with killers before. Islamic extremists aren’t half of the blood thirsty killers that wall street investors are. If I can handle bankers, believe me, I can handle the Ayatollah.”
I just left a message on Carly’s facebook page:
“I see you were invited to join Ricochet.com by Dr. Claire Berlinski. You should definitely join. There are a lot of center right, politically minded, intelligent people who love to hear your views.”
It would be great if all the candidate joined and debated the issues.