Carly Fiorina is the cocktail circuit candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in California. Chuck Devore is a mainstream conservative, bucking the establishment and standing up for American taxpayers and workers. They’re battling each other for the GOP nomination. So there’s some background.

Anyway, Devore is obviously looking more and more attractive to voters — especially Republicans and independents — as the deficit continues to rise, Congressional Democrats try to jam socialized healthcare down America’s throat, and the Obama Administration talks about raising taxes significantly to fund its liberal agenda.

This has led Fiorina, who lead Hewlett-Packard before the company’s board actually forced her to resign, to get desperate. Her latest assault on Devore involves pointing out that he’s a white male. Yes, really.

Asked why she is a better candidate than her Republican primary opponent Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Calif.), Fiorina said that a woman stands a better chance of defeating Boxer.

“I have nothing against white men, I am married to one,” Fiorina said at a breakfast at Americans for Tax Reform. “But Barbara Boxer has defeated [them] over and over again.”

Barbara Boxer could’ve defeated a black, gay, female Republican in past elections. She comes from a state whose idea of a Republican is Arnold “Raise Taxes to Save the Planet” Schwarzenegger. The state’s 55 electoral votes went to Barack Obama by a margin of 61-36% in November 2008. I doubt the race and gender of her past opponents mattered very much.

2010 is a different election entirely. We’re going into an anti-incumbent year, the largest ideological group in the country is once against conservatism, and Republicans are set to beat even longtime incumbents like Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan.

But that’s beside the point. Fiorina’s argument has boiled down to, “Vote for me because the other guy’s a white male.” That goes to show just how desperate she’s gotten. Now she’s just embarrassing herself.