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Carly Fiorina Destroys Katie Couric on Climate Change
It’s from May but — just in case you missed it — it’s here for your viewing enjoyment:
Published in Politics, Science & Technology
I want to see her on the big stage, and if she keeps it up onstage with Hillary.
It does make you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, I like to think of myself as politically pragmatic — no serious person thinks a political novice can or should run for the presidency without ever having won an election before!
But, mercy, Fiorina stands and delivers! Some people seem to get a thrill from Trump sticking it to the GOP “establishment.” I get tingles up my leg watching Carly make the likes of Matthews and Couric wet themselves.
It makes me think, maybe we really do need to run a woman. And not just any woman, but this woman. She’s magnificent.
Katie is struggling to corner Carly.
Very well said and Carly is getting attention from the two debates too.
I think pragmatism is the reason to support her. Think of Bob Beckel or James Carville… old political whores who don’t care about anything but winning. They will lie, cheat or steal if that’s what it takes. They would be supporting Carly because of the woman angle.
Good point.
This really was superb. Even though I would have attacked the premise.
I should note that Carly has a pleasant voice – it is a remarkable contrast to Hillary. She is really, really likable. And I say this as a person who despised her when she ran HP into the ground.
I would be happy to vote for her. She can win, and she might be able to govern very well.
She did OK, but I’m hoping some of the candidates will challenge the premise instead of accepting it. The catastrophic predictions of global warming (rebranded as climate change) are based on computer models that have not been validated by observations. Hence, the policy recommendations do not have a solid basis. Every year, the evidence for this view mounts as the models and observations diverge more, yet few public figures are making the point.
Ms Fiorina could have made these points in a manner that didn’t make her sound like a wingnut. To her credit, she did talk about priorities towards the end, ridiculing the Obama administration’s statements on ISIS vs. climate change. But when you accept the premise of the question the battle is half lost. All too often, Republicans make this mistake. Then the argument is only about the degree and manner of government overreach and intrusion into our lives. We must reject the basis for government involvement altogether. Otherwise, the creeping growth of the state continues; we can only retard its relentless progress.
I hear you, but her “focus on innovation” is actually a more positive way of saying “we’ll adapt, you morons!” That’s not necessarily a call for more government.
I also would have preferred that she come up with an answer including nuclear power and how the French get most of their energy from it, just to make Couric even more uncomfortable. But, overall, I give her a 9/10 and credit her with the best answer any politician has given within my hearing.
I think she handled it perfectly. I would not attack the premise, for one simple reason – that’s exactly what Couric wanted her to do. If Fiorina had said anything about the models, or how temperature hasn’t risen in 18 years or any of that stuff, the MSM’s headline would have been “Fiorina denies global warming.”
The basic science of global warming is where the left feels it is strongest. That’s where they want the debate to stay. They want to play the ‘consensus’ of scientists against ‘deniers’, and put Republicans in the ‘anti-science denier’ box.
It doesn’t matter if the science is or isn’t good at the basic level. What matters is that there is a much smarter way to attack Democrats – by hitting them in areas where they simply have no answer whatsoever. That’s what Fiorina did here – she subtly shifted the discussion to the costs and lack of benefits of the left’s actual policy prescriptions, and that caught Couric off-guard. She literally had no rebuttal to that.
I’ll bet you that after the interview Couric stormed off and ripped up her page of oh-so-clever ripostes she had ready to deliver once Fiorina said that Climate Change isn’t real.
To me, the best thing about that interview wasn’t the specific discussion of climate change, but how deftly Fiorina skated around Couric’s attempt to get a ‘gotcha’ moment on camera. I can see why this woman rose from the secretarial pool to being the first female CEO of a fortune 100 company. She is very, very good.
Great point!
I’m good with that. She rejected the trite premise and took the question where she wanted to go. Poor Katie just couldn’t keep up.
Yes, what Dan said. She’s deft. She doesn’t go nose-to-nose. She sticks the shiv in between their ribs while they’re winding up to punch her. No one among Republicans is this agile, as far as I’ve seen. Not even Rubio, who is quick in a very practiced (slick) way, but whose judgment I distrust (he thought he could work with the devil himself, Chuck Schumer).
ha ha, the same as Jon Stewart said after an interview with John Yoo, “It’s like fishing in sand.”
honestly, I didn’t sense ‘gotcha’ from Couric until Fiorina didn’t give her the answer she wanted on climate change.
And when Couric pressed the 3rd time, she did get nailed to the wall.
iWe,
how do you, personally, put the HP issue aside?
I don’t know that much about it, but I’ve heard it’s a topic.
Just asking, because it matters very much to some people, enough that they won’t even listen to her.
I also agree, she has a good voice quality, and an excellent cadence, and her tone is never condescending, just frank. She always has an example to support her statements.
Loved this. Katie realized she didn’t ‘get’ her Republican ‘extremist’ sound clip.. poor Katie.
There isn’t anywhere else to go, even if AGM is true. Prohibition on Coal is simply insane. The secret to human longevity has always been in our ability to adapt.
Understanding that the interviewer wouldn’t know science if it walked up and bit her in the … well, lets just say Mrs. Fiorina clearly understood the game and her foe and THAT was as close to political perfection as a certified (certifiable?) denier could hope for. It made me smile, unlike this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154
I take your point, but that is a defeatist approach. It’s conceding the main point and being relegated to arguing about the details. This is the mistake that Republicans make repeatedly on a variety of issues. At best, the progressive agenda is only slowed this way, not reversed or even arrested.
The facts are on our side. It takes someone who is knowledgeable, articulate, and courageous to take up the challenge. There are risks, but you can’t run and hide under the covers for fear of being called a ‘denier’. The Left are the true anti-science deniers (e.g., anti-GMO, anti-vax). When is anyone going to make this case?
If we shrink from the battles, the war will be lost.
Unfortunately, the Ms Fiorina’s answers were not in conflict with the Pelosi/Gingrich YouTube clip. The message is the same: global warming is a problem principally caused by humans and action is required to address it. Government action/incentives/whatever, we are left to argue about the details. In the meantime, the EPA marches on.
Its been an hour since I watched the video, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think I heard her say that.
I would say that, while she did not overtly attack the premise, her examples of higher priority issues (and, taking liberty here with my sense of her comments, I think she intended to leave us thinking that list could go on for quite some time) left little doubt that its not a big problem and shouldn’t be the focus of significant government action/funding. I believe that is a clear difference with the Gingrich/Pelosi video.
(I did note before posting that link that Mr. Gingrich actually didn’t say anything himself that I would consider way out of line. But to let himself be used as a prop while the crazy woman spouted off her silliness left him very little wiggle room to get away from her message.)
Yes, learn to be very afraid of the media. Don’t take them on because they are too powerful.
That’s the premise that I find troubling.
By agreeing that human action was required to address the problem, she also implicitly agreed that human action caused the problem. The mitigation strategies all involve reducing human-caused emissions of CO2 and CH4. Certainly, most viewers would interpret it that way.
Both videos acknowledge the need for action.
Newt: “We do agree that our country must take action to address climate change…. If enough of us demand action from our leaders we can spark innovation we need.”
Sure sounds like government action to me.
Thank you, Carly, for getting out there and stating the obvious. Easy targets, I know.
This is the nub of the problem. But, Carly is trying to be careful and smart. Since she is a second tier candidate she has to show that she isn’t scary and can be trusted. She’s not in a position to take the MSM on yet. I LOVE how she talks about Hillary and Obama — bracing stuff.
I understand the political considerations. Yet this tiptoeing around the media is what got us where we are today. One could argue that Ms. Fiorina is in the best position to take on the MSM. Let’s face it, she is not going to be president. That liberates her to be more frank. She could get a cabinet position or VP. A tussle with Couric more than a year from the election would hardly disqualify her.
As an aside, does anyone recall if Reagan pulled his punches in 1980? For comparison, how scared was he of the MSM?
For anyone with time, watch the entire interview on Yahoo (which is listed as 43:38). I watched it a while ago, and my immediate reaction to Indaba’s comment is to recall that Katie was struggling the entire time to corner Carly.
This is not a 5 minute stand alone moment, or her great two minute pushback with Chris Matthews post debate. My recollection is Katie coldly attacks her with every new question for the entire interview. And she withstood it.
I too struggle with the idea of a non-politician in the office, and have heard enough about bad vibes from her HP time to realize that she will have to work very hard to deflect criticism about it.
That said, I have to wonder how well other candidates could put up with this kind of interview pressure. Given my reaction to Carly, it must be very few or we wouldn’t be praising her.
From the point of view of global warming, there is no such thing as clean coal.
Also, what is this about solar power requiring local water?
It seems she is good at regurgitating talking points without understanding the underlying science.
In her defense, I’d offer that she can’t be an expert in everything. On the other hand, her career has been with high-tech companies like Lucent so it’s not too far afield.
Reagan never pulled his punches, which is why he won two landslides.
She’s right. Solar thermal plants can have higher water requirements for cooling than fossil fuel plants. These systems use solar energy to heat water or salt or some other heat storage medium. That heat in turn is turned into steam to power turbines. Returning the steam back to liquid requires it to be cooled, which is often done using more water. You can air cool, but it’s not as efficient.
Solar plants work just like nuclear plants from that standpoint, with the sun taking the place of the nuclear pile for a heat source. And one of the prime features of a nuclear plant is a huge cooling tower venting steam.
In addition, all large solar plants use water to clean off solar panels or solar collectors. Because solar power is such a low-density power source, you need very large surface areas to collect the energy, and this means a lot of water use to keep all those surfaces clean.
You know, one of the things about being a CEO of a big conglomerate like HP is that you have to learn about a lot of different things. HP has probably been involved in these large projects, and she has probably had to have crash courses in those systems. A CEO of a big tech conglomerate is constantly learning, and the subjects can vary widely based on the various industries the company does business in. They also have to be really good at international finance, diplomacy, negotiating, solving disputes, etc.
I am baffled by people who think that experience in government as a legislator is more important than this kind of experience. Being President requires executive skills. Being a Senator requires none. In terms of required skill sets, I’d say being a CEO of a Fortune 100 company is probably the closest thing to the Presidency there is.