Carly Fiorina hijacks pre-school field trip for anti-abortion speech

In a field of monsters, it's hard to single out who's worst, but Carly Fiorina is giving both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump a run for their money. And the lower she sinks in the polls, the worse she gets. Wednesday might have been a nadir, when she ambushed a group of pre-schoolers having a field trip at a botanical garden to use as props for an anti-abortion speech.

The alleged ambush occurred when Fiorina hosted a "right to life" forum at the Greater Des Moines botanical garden. Entering the rally, before a crowd of about 60 people, she directed around 15 young children towards a makeshift stage.

The problem, one parent said, was that the children's parents had not given Fiorina permission to have their children sit with her—in front of a huge banner bearing the image of an unborn fetus—while she talked about harvesting organs from aborted babies.

"The kids went there to see the plants," said Chris Beck, the father of four-year-old Chatham, one of the children Fiorina appeared with. "She ambushed my son's field trip." […]

"Taking them into a pro-life/abortion discussion [was] very poor taste and judgment," Beck said. "I would not want my four-year-old going to that forum—he can't fully comprehend that stuff. He likes dinosaurs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers."

At one point, an anti-abortion activist joined Fiorina at the front  of the room, along with a four-month-old fetus scale model, which was posed sucking its thumb. That went over well with the parents. When the Guardian, which is reporting this story, asked the campaign about the event they got an emailed statement: "We were happy that these children chose to come to Carly's event with their adult supervisor." That's an interesting interpretation of "choice," not surprising coming from this campaign which clearly has difficulties grasping that concept.

She also definitively alienated one Iowa voter. "’I do not know enough about Carly to support her,' Beck said of the woman who introduced his son to the idea of terminating a pregnancy. 'And after today, she wouldn't get my vote for sure.'"