The Dark Horse Candidate

By Ed Hoffman

Like many of you, I have allowed for a little fluctuation when it comes to who my favorite presidential candidates are; that’s par for the course when you have 16 candidates to choose from, and they gradually announce their candidacies over a period of several months.

For example, I only recently got on the Scott Walker train while many people have supported him since long before he announced. (Did he do anything to help himself in last week’s debate? No, but that’s a discussion for another time. It’s still early, and there will be many more opportunities ahead).

I was an early supporter of Rick Perry, but have since soured on him as I see that maybe there’s just no hope for the former governor when he’s thrust onto a debate stage. I thought he had shaken off the curse of 2011, but it appears he just can’t seem to get it together when the pressure’s on. Then there’s Ben Carson, who I didn’t know much about until I met him earlier this year – and now, I couldn’t be more supportive of him. In my opinion, Carson was a star of the debate when he repeated what he once told a reporter: “Why don’t I talk about race that often? It’s because I’m a neurosurgeon.” These are just a few examples, and I’m sure many of you have your own.

But if there’s one candidate I’ve been on board with since day one, it’s Carly Fiorina. Am I supporting her just because we need a strong woman candidate to silence the dead-wrong voices who accuse Republicans of being anti-woman? No, although she can certainly help with that. But why I support Carly Fiorina goes beyond that.

It’s because she’s a candidate who does her homework. While many candidates just focus on crafting one-liners to throw out on the debate stage, Fiorina killed at the “happy hour” debate last week for another reason: She had answers that revealed real policy positions Americans can get behind. Sure, there were some zinger soundbites like, “Hillary Clinton lies about Benghazi, she lied about emails, she is still defending Planned Parenthood, and she is still her party’s frontrunner” – but more importantly, she has platform issues that actually matter to our national security: ISIS, homegrown terrorism and cyber attacks, just to name a few. She knows that we need to go after Chinese cyber criminals and that it isn’t necessary to “wholesale destroy every Americans citizen’s privacy” in order to do it effectively (unlike Rand Paul, who seems to care about nothing but data privacy, she’s no one-trick pony). Fiorina may hold the same positions as other candidates, but she articulates them better by a long shot – and that’s the kind of candidate Republicans need to put up against Hillary Clinton. It’s the reason some are calling her our new “Iron Lady.”

It’s a shame that more people don’t know who Carly Fiorina is. It’s about time they got to know her, and moved her up from the dark horse candidate of the so-called lower tier to one of the legitimate front runners in this presidential race.

Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30 AM- 10:30 AM and Sunday 4:00 PM- 5:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.