To invoke a baseball metaphor,
The first pitch at Fiorina is the number of jobs lost during her tenure as the CEO of
Just as trees need to be pruned to remain healthy and grow, so too must companies occasionally "prune" employees in order to grow, pay dividends to stockholders and eventually hire more people, including, on occasion, some who were previously laid-off.
Fiorina can help advance her candidacy by shifting the debate from lowering taxes to pruning spending. This year, the federal government is projected to take in a record
I asked Fiorina about this in an email. She replied: "
The result, she says, is "our government (is) so big, so bloated, and so corrupt that it no longer serves the people it was designed to serve."
She would move to a zero-based budgeting standard to force every government agency to justify what it spends. She should consider going a step further and force every agency not only to justify its budget, but its very existence. As
Fiorina might promise, if elected, to call in a group of outside auditors who have no ties to anyone doing business with the federal government and conduct a top-to-bottom audit that would expose waste, fraud, abuse and unnecessary spending. Their findings would be presented to
Here's something else Fiorina might do that Republicans in general are not known for: grab the compassion issue from Democrats and make it her own. Promise to mobilize the thousands of churches in America and lead them in what they should be doing anyway -- helping the poor become less so. Two members of my church have decided to leave the comfortable confines of a Sunday school class and spend time at an inner-city mission in
Real compassion is helping people out of poverty, not sending them a government check, which mostly sustains them in poverty. Fiorina should also begin featuring in her speeches and on platforms people who have overcome difficult circumstances as an inspiration to others.
Historically, women seem to model compassion better than men. Fiorina should take advantage of this characteristic.
Call it hardball with a soft cover.
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Cal Thomas, America's most-syndicated columnist, is the author of 10 books.
