Back during the government shutdown of 2013, Carly Fiorina told CNN’s The Lead that she felt badly for Boehner and blamed the shutdown on Ted Cruz and Obama:

Everybody could see this train wreck coming. I actually feel badly for John Boehner. I think this is Ted Cruz and President Obama’s shutdown. I think Ted Cruz’s tactics were wrong. There’s no honor in charging a hill that you know you can’t take, only casualties, although Ted Cruz maybe got name recognition and money along the way. But President Obama wanted this shutdown. And Ted Cruz played right into his hands.

She correctly noted that Obama’s refusal to negotiate led to the shutdown, but said that when Obama publicly refuses over and over to negotiate, he empowers the ‘flamethrowers’.

Carly defended calling it Ted Cruz’s shutdown later in the interview in response to Tapper noting that most Republicans in both the Senate and the House don’t want the government shutdown:

“That’s why I called it Ted Cruz’s shutdown as well as president Obama’s”







Tapper then noted that Republicans are afraid of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Then Fiorina responded:

Look, John Boehner – the reason I said he has a very difficult task is John Boehner is trying to hold the caucus together. And yet there are elements of his caucus that are much more extreme than other elements of the caucus.”

Watch the full interview below:

Here’s my take. I very much like how Carly Fiorina destroys Hillary Clinton and the Left. She is one of the best, if not the best, at taking them on and exposing them for who they really are – she is very impressive.

But when I look at all of these candidates, one of the determinations I must make is how they will do when they get to Washington. Too many times we’ve seen Republicans go to Washington only to become part of the very establishment that they railed against. As Glenn Beck has said in the past, they go to Washington and lose their soul.

All we have on which to make this judgement is their words and their past deeds. In this case, Carly was part of the problem as she fought against Ted Cruz at a time when if Republicans were united they could have accomplished something great.

Just listen to what Trump said the other day referencing the 2013 government shutdown:

He gets it. He understands what Cruz understood, that if we all had stuck together we could have made a dent in Obamacare. That’s the kind of vision that makes a great leader. That’s the kind of vision that Reagan had that led to the collapse of Communist Russia.

I’m not saying Carly can’t be a great leader and a great president, but this is definitely something to consider as this election continues.