Carly Fiorina Tells Hillary Clinton: 'I'm a Feminist and I'm Not Voting for You'
Carly Fiorina dealt a blow to Hillary Clinton on Friday, telling the first female presidential nominee that she tops the list of feminists who won't be supporting her bid for the White House, saying, "Mrs. Clinton, newsflash, I'm a feminist and I'm not voting for you."
Speaking to a crowd of conservative supporters at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to the Majority conference in Washington, D.C., Fiorina excoriated the progressive vision of President Obama, Clinton and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren whom she described as "locked arm-in-arm telling the rest of us how we're going to live our lives … and what we should think and what we should do."
"Progressivism, pure and simple, is the tyranny of the few over the many. It is what our founders feared most. It is one of the reasons why they wrote the Constitution — to prevent the concentration of power," she asserted. "When we think about those proud progressives speaking to Americans all across the nation, we know this fight matters. This is a fight that we must win."
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At the same time Fiorina was striking against Clinton's brand of feminism that "bludgeons people into a Left-wing litany of causes," the Democratic nominee was following in Obama's footsteps by giving the keynote address at Planned Parenthood's annual conference. Despite the fact that the nation's largest abortion business is under investigation by federal agencies and three congressional committees for illegally selling the body parts of babies killed at its clinics, Clinton told the organization "as president, I will always have your back."
At the Road to the Majority conference, Fiorina said as she traveled across the United States as a Republican presidential candidate and then a vice presidential candidate for Sen. Ted Cruz, she saw far too many people with the "look of powerlessness in their eyes."
"I have looked into the eyes of coal miners as they have seen their jobs, their families, their livelihoods and communities destroyed by an overreaching government. And they wonder: why is my government doing this to me?"
"I have had veterans — proud, strong, fighting men who come up to me with tears in their eyes and tell me they feel powerless to navigate through the bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration and get the care they have so richly earned," she continued. "I have looked at single moms who are trying to raise children and say they want to move forward in life but every government program of dependence tells them to fall back."
Expressing grief over the circumstances of these American families, Fiorina criticized the federal government, saying, "too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people and the progressives want to concentrate even more."
Fiorina urged Republicans not to be the party that concentrates power, but to instead be the "warriors that say no" and return power to citizens, families, small business owners, states, and local communities.
"Our government was intended to be a citizen government — of the people, by the people and for the people — that is what our founders intended."
Fiorina said she will be working to ensure that the Republican Party has "good conservative candidates" up and down the ballot for the November election, but didn't say for which candidates she might be campaigning. She didn't mention if that list includes presidential nominee Donald Trump, who some critics say is a misogynist.
Expounding on her reasoning for being a feminist and a Republican, Fiorina recounted a conversation she had with actress Rosie Perez, who at the time was a co-host on ABC's daytime talk show "The View."
As the two were talking before the broadcast, Perez unsurprisingly revealed that she is not a Republican, and asked why, as a successful businesswoman, Fiorina identifies as a conservative.
"This is the question we have to answer to win," Fiorina said.
In her reply, she said, "Rosie, I'm a conservative because I know every single one of us is gifted by God. All of us have the capacity to live lives of dignity and purpose and meaning. And all throughout time, work, if done well, brings us dignity. Family brings us purpose and faith brings meaning to our lives.
"And I know that our values, our policies, our principals work better to lift everyone up regardless of their circumstances. This, Rosie, is not what progressives believe.
"Progressives believe some are smarter than others, some are better than others. So some are doing to decide for others and choose for others. This is not what this nation can stand for — that's why I'm a conservative."
