Planned Benghazihood Was All Carly Fiorina Ever Had Going. She's Toast, Right?

Carly Fiorina, emphatically making shit up. Win!

No, Carly Fiorina isn't toast just because Jason Chaffetz couldn't rattle Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards or prove any wrongdoing on the part of the organization. And, no, Carly Fiorina isn't toast just because Kevin McCarthy let the air out of the Benghazi balloon.

I suppose it's also fair to allow that Carly Fiorina isn't toast because her self-inflated secretary-to-CEO story is wrecked by the fact that she wasn't a secretary-to-CEO at all or that she was not da bomb as a CEO but a bomb as a CEO.

In all fairness to Fiorina, she was a secretary briefly and years later, in an unrelated event, she became a CEO. What's disconcerting about Carly is that in everything I've ever heard her say, there is a small bit of truth surrounded by astounding hogwash. It's the basis for the way she's been campaigning, and it's the basis for her baseless smears of Hillary Clinton.

My prediction for Carly? She will begin to slip in the polls -- already happening -- even before New Hampshire and not be a factor in the general election except for her occasional visits to Fox News or other outlets to mouth her baseless smears of Hillary Clinton. Then she'll take her show on the road, either as a Fox News commentator or a speaker on the conservative circuit, or both.

Why is this her fate? Not because of her penchant for deception -- that is a feature, not a bug, for Republicans. No, it's mostly because she is so decidedly unpleasant that building a personal base of support from the already deeply disturbed GOP base by being shockingly unpleasant and narcissistic won't work very well. She'll capture 5 percent of 25 percent of America. That's just enough to get on Fox.

It'll be fun and a minor distraction in an otherwise goofy GOP primary season and good enough to lift Fiorina's prospects in low-brow punditry. But stardom? Hella no.

Ouch.

Update. Steve Rattner, who tears into Fiorina on the above Morning Joe, has recently penned an Op-Ed in the Times, again tearing into Fiorina's business record. double ouch.