Just Call Her Honey

by digby

So it looks like Carly Fiorina is going to go for the cat fight strategy in her effort to unseat Barbara Boxer. Here’s Greg Sargent:

Carly Fiorina, the businesswoman who hopes to be the GOP challenger to Senator Barbara Boxer next year, has unveiled a new attack line: She’s faulting Boxer for wanting to be called “Senator,” not “ma’am,” hitting Boxer with a new Web ad and a new Website devoted entirely to this criticism. It’s a reference to a widely-noted exchange Boxer had earlier this year with a Brigadier General at a hearing. After he called her “ma’am,” Boxer rejoined: “Do me a favor, could you say `Senator,’ instead of `ma’am’? It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title.” You can watch that exchange right here, on the Fiorina campaign’s new Web site devoted to this line of criticism, CallMeBarbara.com.

In a statement accompanying the release of the new site and ad, the Fiorina campaign blasted the exchange as a sign of Boxer’s “egotistical style.”

That’s really something coming from a person Portfolio Magazine named her one of the worst CEOs of all time:

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.

I’m pretty sure she made people call her “Your Highness.”

Seriously, this is a very low road to be going especially this early in the campaign. I guess Fiorina thinks attacking Boxer for being uppity will head off her wingnut primary opponent. Calling a woman a bitch (which is essentially what this is) is always a winner, I know, but Fiorina isn’t exactly the poster child for humility. I don’t think she’s going to get the teabags unless she goes full-on Bachman and if she does that she stands to alienate a whole lot of women in California who are far less tolerant of this nonsense than are members of the political establishment.

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