05 February 2010

The Demonsheep That Ate Carly Fiorina's Political Aspirations


"Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir -- three bags full."


One of my buddies called me the other day.

"Man, we should become political consultants," he said. "You think we could start a firm?"

I don't know the first thing about political consulting from a "what do you do everyday" perspective, or how you would go about billing your clients, so I said, "that sounds good, but think about it -- we don't know anybody on the national level, where they will buy any old bullshit, who might recommend us, and we can't deliver anything tangible like votes or big donations on a local level -- it just doesn't sound like it would work."

We shot the breeze about a few other things, and then I hung up the phone. It was pretty late, so I clicked up TweetDeck to take a tour around the Twitterverse before I went to bed.

The hashtag "#demonsheep" kept showing up so much in my stream of followers that I finally tweeted to one of my Twitter buddies who usually has reliable information to find out what the hell was going on.

She shot me back this link, then hit me with another message -- "#demonsheep will be looking for you. LOL!!"

After clicking the link and watching the attack video that Carly Fiorina's people put together to make her primary opponent for a U.S. Senate seat in California, Tom Campbell, look like he's a Fiscal Conservative In Name Only (FCINO), I had to wonder if my buddy wasn't onto something with his political consultant idea.

I mean, I even went over to The Weekly Standard, a conservative standard bearer, where another one of my twitter buddies is their in-house blogger, to find that even she was at a loss for a way to put a positive spin on the latest antics of this out of control GOP candidate:

"This thing's going viral, but not necessarily in a way that will help Carly Fiorina's message. It just oozes that special brand of ludicrous hilarity that the Internet loves, and the Internet will give the demon sheep many, many lives. And, you will now be able to say, "I knew the demon sheep when."

If I thought the creation of the demon sheep was an intentional Internet hit, I'd be impressed, but I'm not sure it was. Nor am I sure that the true inanity required to produce viral hits will ever be the kind of thing that serves political campaigns well, but here's to the Fiorina campaign for creating something we'll all remember."

Mary Katherine Ham
The Weekly Standard

I'm actually putting together a video myself this week, so I was acutely aware of all the bad editing and the off-kilter tempo in this campaign video. The funniest thing, though, wasn't the video, but the promise from Fiorina's spokespeople of MORE TO COME that will be even crazier.

Whose money is she spending on these things? is what I want to know. And how many of these "productions" can she do before she calls into question HER OWN sense of fiscal responsibility?

I used to think the scuttlebutt about Fiornia that insisted she did nothing but work to destroy Hewlett-Packard when she was their CEO was sour grapes, but at the rate she's been going lately, it is a wonder the entire board of directors didn't get sued while she was running the company.

Carly, I'll give you a little political advice for free. Your "tough as nails" act doesn't really play well, especially since you never really turned anything around. And your donors would probably appreciate it if your campaign tried to look like it was spending their money wisely, especially since you are running as a -- ha ha! -- a "fiscal conservative".

And whatever else you do, Carly, PLEASE don't bring back that "Carlyfornia For Congress" idea -- PLEASE!!

Maybe I'll call my buddy back tonight, and tell him I think his idea is a go after all. The name of our firm?


"Blacksheep Political Consultants."
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