Carly Fiorina has campaigned on being a hard-bitten successful woman who earned her success and doesn’t think women need additional equal pay protections or any of that nonsense, because they should be able to earn their success as individuals without any crazy special rules like being paid the same amount for doing the same job as men. Now, Fiorina is outraged that she’s being excluded from a debate she didn’t qualify for according to the rules.
According to the rules of ABC’s Saturday night Republican debate, to qualify a candidate needs to have placed in the top three in Iowa or be polling in the top six either nationally or in New Hampshire. Fiorina placed seventh in Iowa and is polling outside the top six nationally and in New Hampshire. So she doesn’t qualify, but she’s angry and she’s perfectly willing to claim she should be included because she’s a woman:
“It’s hard to justify a single candidate, the only woman, being excluded,” Fiorina told The Hill following a campaign event for college students at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
(Jim Gilmore is also being excluded, but it’s hard to blame Fiorina for forgetting about him.)
Fiorina isn’t the only one arguing she should be included because it would somehow look bad to exclude a woman because she didn’t qualify. Mitt Romney tweeted “Hey @ABC: put @CarlyFiorina on the debate stage! She got more Iowa votes than John and Chris. Don't exclude only woman.” Other prominent Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, have called for the rules to be changed to include Fiorina, though without citing gender as a reason.
Here we have a woman who doesn’t think that federal laws should be changed to make it harder for companies to discriminate against women, but who thinks rules should be thrown out to get her into a debate she didn’t qualify for, because she’s a woman and it would look bad to exclude her. Classic. Come to think of it, I now fully support Fiorina being let into the debate so that moderators could press her to explain how that logic works.