Fiorina takes debate momentum to S.C.
After elbowing her way onto the main stage, businesswoman Carly Fiorina’s sharp answers, flashes of humor and fight with front-runner Donald Trump garnered rave reviews following the second Republican presidential debate.
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who has never held elected office, now seeks to build on her momentum from the West Coast to the South, as she joins another crowd of 11 presidential candidates Friday in Greenville, S.C., at a gathering put on by the political arm of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
“I certainly hope we’ll see movement in the polls,” Fiorina said Thursday on “CBS This Morning” as she made a victory lap on the morning television shows.
“You know, going into that debate, half the audience had never heard my name and didn’t know I was running for president,” she said. “So it was a big opportunity for me to introduce myself to the American people, to many of the American people, and I’m very happy I had that opportunity.”
The audience was huge: An average of 22.9 million viewers across the three-hour debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library was the biggest audience in CNN's history and close to the 24 million average for the two-hour debate last month on Fox News. Fiorina wasn't on the main stage for that first debate, but her performance in Fox's "kid's table" debate — and growing support that followed it — helped persuade CNN to tweak its rules to give her a spot in prime time Wednesday.
In the cacophony of Wednesday’s post-debate “spin room,” several of the candidates, backed by dozens of their operatives and supporters, were declaring themselves the debate’s winner. A Fiorina campaign representative could not be found. Her performance spoke for itself.
“The question I had coming in was how much of an impact Carly Fiorina would have on stage, and it was answered from the very beginning,” former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said. “It was immediate. It was profound. And I think that the other gentlemen on the stage didn’t really know how to address her being there.”
On to South Carolina
In addition to Fiorina, billionaire Donald Trump, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and more of the campaign’s biggest names will be in Greenville.
Heritage Action for America invited every candidate with poll numbers above 1 percent in August, or any candidate above 3 percent nationally on July 20. The six-hour event will clock in at slightly longer than Wednesday’s two debates.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Bobby Jindal and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum both managed to meet the 1 percent threshold by a hairsbreadth and will participate. But two others who easily qualified declined invitations: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf said the Heritage event “just didn’t fit schedulewise.”
Kasich has events planned in Michigan on Saturday. Huckabee was scheduled to speak Friday at the California Republican Convention.
Organizers promise a policy-heavy event. Each candidate will appear separately and field questions from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham and some of the thousands of activists expected to attend.
South Carolina, of course, is one of the key early-voting states in the 2016 contest, and Friday’s event will be hosted by former Palmetto State Sen. Jim DeMint, now the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Taking on Trump
While Trump has been the big entertainment draw in the race’s early months, the real estate magnate was silent for long stretches Wednesday and offered few policy specifics.
Other candidates who have been in Trump’s shadow for much of the campaign judged themselves by how they stood up to the race’s biggest bully.
Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz pointed to when Trump went after President George W. Bush and Jeb Bush replied: “You know what? As it relates to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure: He kept us safe.”
“One of the key moments is ultimately when he silenced Trump for the remainder of the debate when he was talking about national security,” Diaz said. “I think that was fairly clear.”
Trump did speak several more times after that exchange, though he did not tangle with Bush again.
But if you ask Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, he was the one who took down Trump with an early line about how “We don’t need another apprentice in the White House.”
Walker was otherwise a nonfactor, amid cratering support in the polls, and he stayed long into the night working the spin room.
“Being aggressive” was his key, Walker told reporters. “We set the tone early on. We set a contrast out there.”
Perhaps the biggest curiosity on stage was Carson, the novice candidate who keeps rising in the polls as he refuses to do battle with Trump or anyone else. When they disagreed on autism and childhood vaccinations, Carson quipped of Trump: “He’s an OK doctor.” Otherwise, Carson did not particularly stand out and did not earn wide praise from the commentariat.
That did not bother Carson spokesman Doug Watts. He said the campaign added 300,000 Facebook fans and raised $3 million in mostly small donations Wednesday.
“We think those are all metrics that show there were people that are looking for a positive approach,” Watts said, “that aren’t necessarily needing the fight and the arm-wrestling to make a difference.”
