Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit looks at a series of tweets from Carly Fiorina and can’t resist speculating that she wants to run for president again. She did put out the same remarks on her Facebook page, but has made no comments in a similar vein on her homepage or Instagram page. If she was thinking about running for any office, wouldn’t she be at least asking people to sign up for emails or something? Sometimes, a series of frustrated tweets about the president is just a series of tweets.
“When did so many Republicans decide that we should also pledge allegiance to The Party and swear fidelity to President Trump?” asks Fiorina. That doesn’t sound like someone who sees fertile ground for a primary challenge.
If she chose to ran for president as a Republican, Fiorina would have a huge climb to knock off Trump but could probably quickly become the queen of the challengers. She’s wealthy enough to self-finance, she doesn’t have embarrassing scandals like Mark Sanford does, she doesn’t have a history of incendiary statements the way Joe Walsh does, she’s got a stronger argument about being a conservative than William Weld does, and she’s been a polished and prepared candidate. On the other hand, her last presidential campaign just didn’t catch fire. She got 1.86 percent in the Iowa caucuses and 4.1 percent in the New Hampshire primary. And it’s tougher to throw together a good presidential campaign at the last minute.
Then again, Howard Schultz did end his short-lived independent bid, meaning there’s an option that the 2020 election will come down to President Trump and some socialism-embracing Democrat, with the Green and Libertarian candidates struggling to hit four percent. If you’re a pro-business, pro-free-trade, center-right Republican, you probably see the a rerun of the same choices as 2016, with Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders replacing Hillary Clinton, as nightmarish. Maybe you could argue there’s a better-than-usual opening there for a female candidate if the race is Biden vs. Trump.
But if Fiorina wants to run, she’ll probably just come out and say she’s running – not cryptically vent frustration in a series of tweets.