That’s California Senatorial candidate, Carly Fiorina, describing the Democratic health care plan making its way through the Senate right now.
We just finished chatting about health care, Barbara Boxer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and her primary campaign against Chuck DeVore.
Highlights:
She pounded the health care bill, claiming it would increase the cost of care, while reducing the quality of service, and seemed particularly worried about its effect on women's health issues.
"This is a disaster for women's health, never mind the fact the numbers don't work."
As a breast cancer survivor, she used the U.S. Preventive Task Force's new guidelines on mammograms as an example of what can happen when government exerts undo control on patient-doctor decisions.
She claimed such panels would invariably lead to rationing. When I asked if she’d go so far as to call them “death panels”, she demurred, because "for better or worse", the word as used now has become "discredited". But she was still clear that some sort of rationing was in the cards.
Onto campaign stuff.
Even though she and Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore are both 10 pts behind Boxer, the CW has Fiorina as the GOP front-runner, thanks to backing from a significant number of U.S. Senate leaders and her fundraising ability.
She said:
“I am the candidate who can beat Barbara Boxer”.
Obviously, front-runners prefer talking about general election candidates; not primary foes.
When asked if the primary was going to be about Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina, or Chuck DeVore, she said it would likely be "all three”.
She knows conservatives have questioned her credentials, but said she won’t “permit anyone to misrepresent my record".
So rather than pretend the underdog doesn’t exist, it looks like Fiorina will make aggressive pushbacks against attempts to define her as less than conservative, efforts DeVore is already undertaking.
As for a general election strategy, a couple things stood out.
First, we know Barbara Boxer has claimed she’ll need $20 million for re-election. Fiorina said the race would get a lot more expensive than that, but when pressed, was reluctant to suggest she might contribute some of her own personal wealth (the $ part of her operation gets a good treatment here).
Second, she made a notable point of contrasting Barbara Boxer’s record with Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (“night and day” is how she described them). Feinstein is much more popular than Boxer in CA, and separating the two is in Fiorina’s best interest. We'll see how effective she is at it, considering Feinstein will probably rally to Boxer's aid in a general.
Finally, there’s the whole issue of whether's she's a liberal in conservative's clothing. DeVore and his activists are already trying to turn her into Arnold 2.0: a "conservative" with no voting history who might turn moderate or liberal once elected.
She replied:
“Arnold and I cannot be compared in any way.”
And so Schwarzenegger's legacy goes.
