Denying that words matter, 61-year-old former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina called any link to her anti-abortion rant at the Sept. 16 Fox News debate “typical left wing tactics.” Looking into the camera Sept. 16 with her eyes blazing, Fiorina denounced Planned Parenthood for selling fetal body parts. Describing a doctored video she never saw, “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” Fiorina told the debate audience and 23 million TV viewers, maybe including Robert Lewis Dear who opened fire Nov. 27 on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, killing three and wounding 10. “No more body parts,” Dear told arresting officers, establishing a clear link to Fiorina’s incendiary rhetoric and a psycho’s gun violence, killing far more citizens than domestic or Mideast terrorism.
Seeking votes at any cost to salvage her flagging GOP presidential campaign, Fiorina was willing to spew any propaganda or incendiary rhetoric to score points at the GOP debate. While getting a brief bounce from the debate, her campaign fell like a rock, now at 3%. Fiorina’s nosedive had to do with her stubborn refusal to admit the video she referenced in the Sept. 16 debate was fraud by pro-life activists. After all the Planned Parenthood de-funding talk by the GOP, Fiorina incited marginalized loonies, like Dear, to stop the Nazi-like killers in abortion clinics. Fiorina manipulated the pro-life audience to back her campaign but it backfired because she concocted her remarks without proof. “It is so typical of the left to begin demonizing the messenger because they don’t agree with your message,” Carly told Fox News Mike Wallace today, reacting to Planned Parenthood’s attack.
Carly won’t admit that her sinking campaign has nothing to do with the left but with GOP primary voters who got fed up with her over-intensity and hyperbole. Fiorina lacks the common sense to know that words matter from politicians taking the bully pulpit, getting an audience with TV viewers, most balanced but some sick-and-dangerous. Watching Dear open fire on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic presents problems for Fiorina and the GOP whose anti-abortion stance has gone over the deep end. While a pet peeve for the GOP, Fiorina went over the top fingering Planned Parenthood without proof for selling fetal parts from their abortion clinics. Before pro-life info came out about Dear, the GOP blamed the liberal press for jumping to conclusions. Once Colorado Springs law enforcement confirmed Dear’s anti-abortion remarks, the motive became clear.
GOP officials won’t admit that Fiorina’s over-the-top rhetoric at the Sept. 16 Fox News debate inspired Dear, and maybe others, to lash out at abortion clinics. “The vast majority of Americans agree. What Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong,” Firoina told Mike Wallace today. “And that is why the vast majority of Americans are prepared, not only to defend Planned Parenthood, but also to stop abortion for any reason at all after five months,” insisted Fiorina, justifying her past comments that inspired lunatics like Dear to commit mayhem. Hearing Dear say “no more body parts,” directly relates to Fiorina’s pro-life diatribe, hyping a doctored video that she never really saw describing newborns getting torn limb-to-limb to harvest their organs. When it comes to highly-charged issues like abortion, the GOP needs to tone down the rhetoric or face more lunatics like Dear.
Reasonbly-minded voters on both sides of the aisle disagree on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. Pro-life critics need to recall women’s lives before Roe v. Wade. Forced to go South-of-the-border or in back alleys, women seeking abortions were routinely exploited and butchered. Taking the right to abortion out of women’s hands, making it illegal, imposing criminal penalties on doctors and patients, make no sense. Before Roe v. Wade, women’s bodies were sacrificed over ordinary reproductive decisions. When Fiorina talks of the “vast majority of Americans,” she’s not referring to women of both major parties seeking to reinforce Roe v. Wade and keep reproductive decisions in the hands of women and doctors. Spewing incendiary rhetoric like Fiorina, inciting violence and pandering to religious conservatives is no way to win votes.
Democrats jumped all over the Nov. 27 Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood massacre, highlighting the GOP’s opposition to women’s reproductive freedom. For the Party that wants less government, the GOP seeks to end Roe v. Wade and legislate laws to make abortion a crime for doctors and patients. “Praying for the loved ones of those killed, those injured & first responders who bravely go the situation under control in Colorado Springs,” wrote Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the only GOP presidential candidate to respond to the incident. Opposing reproductive freedom and backing lunatics’, like Dear’s Second Amendment gun rights, shows how the Colorado Springs incident highlights what’s wrong with the GOP platform. “I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it’s doing. I hope people realize bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences,” wrote candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.).
