‘Lift Everyone Up,’ Carly Fiorina Says in Call for Unity
Caleb Ecarma /
Carly Fiorina told conservatives Friday that it’s more valuable to bring people together after a polarizing election than to continue fighting.
“It’s fun to have a fight and it’s really fun to have a fight when you win, but now that we’ve won, it’s important to bring people on,” the entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate said at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.
“We want to lift everyone up, regardless of their circumstances or their opinions,” Fiorina said.
One reason to bring people together, she said, is to popularize and maintain changes made in Washington now that Republicans are in power in the White House as well as Congress.
“Substantial change inspires substantial resistance, and boy, is there substantial resistance out there,” Fiorina said. “If change is not accompanied by growing support, the substantial change is never sustained.”
Fiorina referenced Obamacare, which President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are in the process of repealing and replacing.
“We have to bring people along now, so that the changes we all believe in will be sustained,” she said.
Along with her call for civility and unity, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO stressed the importance of limiting the size of the federal government and moving power back to the states:
We now have an opportunity to … take money and power outside of Washington, D.C., and return it where it belongs: to communities, and families, and businesses, and states.
You don’t need to be political to know … if you put too much power in the hands of a bureaucrat somewhere, that power is going to be abused.
In recent weeks, Fiorina has said she is considering a challenge to Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate, for his U.S. Senate seat. In 2010, she lost a bruising Senate race in California against incumbent Barbara Boxer by 10 points.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.