Ted Cruz, Texan presidential hopeful and Grandpa Munster lookalike, attempted to bring his faltering campaign back to life on Wednesday by making a big announcement: He’s tapping Carly Fiorina as his running mate.
Fiorina, if you managed to block out the first half of this unending presidential race, was one of over a dozen hopefuls who sought the 2016 GOP nomination. A business executive who has lost every political race she has entered — and who was booted out of Hewlett-Packard — Fiorina rose to national prominence early in 2016 race with a strong showing in the first of 1,000 GOP debates.
Fiorina is a conventional conservative, meaning she and Cruz share a lot in common. Among Fiorina’s more notable positions are her thoughts on abortion (against it), public education (privatize it), the Affordable Care Act (repeal it), the minimum wage (get rid of it), and the California drought, which she blames on “overzealous environmentalists.”
But there is one issue where she stands apart from Cruz. Unlike her buddy Cruz — who insists climate change science is “partisan dogma and ideology” — Fiorina has acknowledged the scientific consensus. She’s admitted in interviews, “scientists tell us that global warming is real and man-made.”
But don’t get too excited that Fiorina wants to do something about it. “I believe if you’re going to go to science, you need to read the fine print,” Fiorina said last year. “And here’s what the scientists say: A single nation acting alone can make no difference at all. The only answer to this problem, according to the scientists, is a three-decade global effort, coordinated and costing trillions of dollars. Are you kidding? It’ll never happen.”
In other words, why bother? We can see why Ted likes her.
Cruz’s announcement begs the question: Why is he even talking about a running mate? Cruz’s only chance at winning the nomination at this point is if Donald Trump turns out to be a talking donut with a wig on top. The National Review speculates that Cruz wants to distract from Trump’s five-primary win on Tuesday, which isn’t a bad guess. And Fiorna is indeed a woman, something none of the other GOP presidential hopefuls can boast and what Cruz might consider valuable in trolling Hillary Clinton.
