Good News for Dems’ Hopes for Holding Senate in 2012 – NRSC Has Hired Carly Fiorina

How disastrous was Carly Fiorina’s race last year to unseat California Sen. Barbara Boxer? In a GOP wave year, Fiorina lost to one of the most liberal members of the Senate by over 1 million votes. In a campaign year in which most Democratic candidates shied away from being associated with Pres. Obama, Boxer felt perfectly comfortable closing her campaign with a final ad showing her on stage hugging the president in front of a packed auditorium filled with cheering voters.

It’s no surprise that Fiorina — whom, it’s fair to say, California voters grew to like less and less as they got to know her — has opted not to run against Sen. Dianne Feinstein next year. (So has eMeg Whitman, who ran a higher profile, much more expensive — she spent over $100 million of her own money — and even more disastrous campaign for governor against Jerry Brown last year.)

What is surprising is that, despite the fact that Republican chances for winning control of the Senate next year could not be stronger — more Democrats than Republicans are up for reelection, for one thing — Republicans have recruited Fiorina to do high-level fundraising for their national committee.

Via Calbuzz:

News that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has appointed Carly Fiorina, the articulate and widely-reviled former Hewlett Packard CEO, as their latest vice-chairperson (i.e. fund-raiser), had to have sent national Democrats into convulsive giggles…

“Carly Fiorina laid off thousands and outsourced good American jobs overseas, but that didn’t stop national Republicans from investing millions in her campaign, which she lost by double digits, or hiring her today,” replied the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Republicans are not only working to protect tax breaks for millionaires, but they’re also finding them jobs.”

You gotta love the irony in sending Hurricane Carly out as the symbol of job creation and economic growth — she who vigorously defended shipping thousands of HP jobs abroad and who allied herself so thoroughly with the Tea Party that she found herself far to the right of mainstream California voters. How else do you lose to Barbara “Rosa Luxemburg” Boxer?

The NRSC thought they had a winner with Fiorina when they recruited her to run against Babs. And she did raise $16 million. But as fund-raising sidekick to Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, it’s hard to imagine that an unlikable political dilettante who lost to Boxer — even if she was CEO of a major corporation — will do much for the GOP outside of its reliable base.