Note to Hillary Clinton: Carly Fiorina is not going anywhere any time soon.
With a campaign on the horizon, few people were more visible at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week than Fiorina, the former HP CEO-turned-political candidate. During her multiple appearances at the conference and on cable news, Fiorina amped up her rhetoric of the former secretary of state, setting herself up as anti-Hillary Clinton in the process.
However, one thing she does appreciate about Clinton, is who the former secretary of state has been looking to on occasion as she prepares to right the wrongs of her losing 2008 presidential bid.
That would be Fiorina.
In an interview on Saturday at CPAC, Fiorina told The Daily Caller she is flattered that Clinton looks to her for campaign tips, after the former first lady began using one of Fiorina’s primary speech lines at a women’s conference in Silicon Valley on Tuesday. During her address, Clinton called on women to “unlock their full potential,” a message Fiorina has spread ahead of her probable campaign. (RELATED: Is Hillary Clinton Stealing Speech Lines From Carly Fiorina?)
“I might say what difference does it make at this point,” Fiorina said, mocking Clinton’s statement during a hearing on Benghazi in January, 2013. “I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but eventually if Hillary Clinton runs, she’s going to have to have a clear message about what she stands for and what she’s accomplished.”
Prior to snagging the Fiorina line as her own, there were also striking resemblances between books released by the two women, with the political media pointing out that Clinton’s 2014 memoir “Hard Choices” bears an eerie similarity to Fiorina’s 2006 memoir “Tough Choices.”
“Her lack of accomplishment at the State Department is a legitimate and real issue,” Fiorina said. “I think Benghazi is turning into a bigger and bigger issue every day. The emails we saw released this week are pretty shocking actually. I think that the donations that the Clinton Foundation has taken are a real issue as well.”
“I think there’s just this whole pattern which many Democrats have, in fairness, not just Hillary Clinton,” she said. “This whole pattern of, sort of, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ that leaves them vulnerable.”
In her CPAC speech on Thursday, Fiorina issued a scathing rebuke of Clinton, asking the former secretary to “name an accomplishment” while, just as broadly, telling her “you don’t know what leadership means.” (RELATED: Fiorina To Hillary: ‘You Don’t ‘Know What Leadership Means’)
However, while the former business executive continues to harp on Clinton for missteps at the State Department and elsewhere, she aimed criticism at the GOP for its own issues. Specifically, Fiorina offered a harsh critique of the GOP’s strategy to counteract the president’s executive order on immigration, after Congress passed a seven-day stop-gap bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security until Friday.
“I think it’s a failure, on the other side, on our side to come up with a strategy that’s going to work. This clearly isn’t working. They’ve known it wasn’t going to work for a couple of months,” Fiorina said.
“You can’t defund the Department of Homeland Security right now,” Fiorina said, echoing comments by Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential 2016 candidate. “Not at a time when, everyday, the news is filled with new horrors. You can’t defund them, so that’s not a winning strategy.”
The former HP executive reportedly, for whom a Super PAC was recently launched, plans to announce her 2016 candidacy in late April/early May. However, after pouring over $6 million of her own money into her losing effort against California Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, she says she does not plan to self fund at all.
Fiorina, who lost by 10 points to the longtime senator four years ago, also offered up her own assessment for the Republican Party as a whole. Pointing to the question some, including radio host Rush Limbaugh, say lost the 2012 election for Mitt Romney, Fiorina said the GOP needs to show that it cares about average voters during a time when the party’s tone comes off to some as “angry” and “sometimes judgmental.”
“You have to demonstrate that you care about them. It’s a question for the party. Our party’s tone is sometimes judgmental, it’s angry,” Fiorina said. “The only way we win is by convincing a majority of America that our principles, our policies, our values are better for them.”
“We have to talk about our policies in terms that land in people’s lives,” Fiorina said. “We know that an $18 trillion deficit is a huge problem, but that doesn’t land in people’s lives, so we have to make the connection to their life because all politics is personal.”