(Oskaloosa, IA) Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made a campaign stop at Smokey Row Coffee House in Oskaloosa, a favorite campaign stop for many candidates, where she held a town hall. She spoke for about a half an hour to a group of approximately 80 people who stopped by the coffee house on their lunch hour.
While taking questions she was asked if she wanted to see David Daleiden, the project lead with Center for Medical Progress who was recently indicted by a grand jury in Texas, apologize to her for “tricking” her with the videos released this summer that implicated Planned Parenthood in the sale of fetal body parts.
Fiorina responded, “No, because I wasn’t tricked. Look, here are the facts. Yes, amazingly investigative journalists were indicted in Houston, but here are the facts. Planned Parenthood engages in late term abortions, partial birth abortions, and alters those abortion techniques to sell body parts and that’s a fact. I will never sit down and be quiet about that. And it is also a fact that Planned Parenthood is a political operation. Taxpayers are funding a political operation that pours millions of dollars into pro-abortion candidates political coffers every single year. Forget about abortion for a second, forget about whether or not you’re disgusted by the sale of body parts of unborn children. I am. I think most Americans are, but just set that aside. Is it fair for taxpayers to be funding a political organization? They don’t fund any other political organizations. So, guess what? In a President Fiorina budget there will not be a single dime for Planned Parenthood, but there will be lots of money for women’s health.”
Fiorina also had some tough words for federal involvement in education. She was asked about the U.S. Department of Education and she discussed shrinking it’s size and sending that money back to the states and local school districts. She then addressed Common Core and other federal education programs.
“And all these programs, some of them have come out under Republicans too – Common Core, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, they are all bad ideas. Because guess what they are? They are big bureaucratic programs coming out of Washington and, by the way, there are a bunch of interests who helped write those programs. In the case of Common Core guess who helped write it? Text book companies and the testing companies it’s all crony capitalism folks. It’s alive and well under Republicans and Democrats. We have to take our country back,” Fiorina answered.
She encouraged Iowans to caucus for her. She said they have a good ground game, and scoffed at pundits who said the race was a two candidate race pointing out that no one has voted yet.
You can watch the entire town hall meeting below: