NASHUA, N.H. — It was the biggest field of potential Republican White House hopefuls the Granite State has ever seen on the trail, but it was the Democrats they came to assail.
The GOP contenders loosed their sharpest rhetorical arrows at President Obama and Hillary Clinton — largely heeding warnings to avoid singing mud at each other.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul got the Clinton-bashing ball rolling early Saturday at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit, snarking that when the former secretary of state travels, “there’s going to need to be two planes — one for her and her entourage, and one for her baggage.
“I’m concerned that the plane with the baggage is really getting heavy and teetering,” Paul said, cracking up the roomful of Republican officials and voters.
The libertarian favorite scoffed at Clinton’s explanation of why she used a private email server while running the State Department.
“She’s just sort of above the rules? She doesn’t have to use a government server?,” the Presidential hopeful said.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, well, my server was protected by the Secret Service.’ Does she think there’s, like, floppy disks in her basement?”
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Paul said his biggest concern about Clinton, who began her bid for the Democratic presidential nominee last week, is how she handled the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.
“When I think of the scandals, the one that probably bothers me most is Benghazi,” Paul said.
“We have a potential nominee on the other side who wants to be the commander-in-chief,” Paul said, riffing on his critiques of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, which included the Benghazi attack that claimed the lives of American diplomats in 2012.
“There is a bar you must cross: Will you defend the country? Will you provide security when it’s requested?” Paul demanded.
“What I really fault Hillary Clinton for most is that for nine months, they pleaded, day in, day out … They pleaded for help,” he said of American diplomatic staff in Libya.
While that help didn’t come, Paul sardonically noted, “Hillary Clinton’s State Department sent three comedians to India on the ‘Make Chai, Not War Tour.’ She spent $650,000 on Facebook ads.”
Paul’s ire wasn’t limited to Clinton alone: “The other Republicans will criticize the President and Hillary Clinton for their foreign policy, but they would have just done the same thing, just 10 times over,” he said.
“Every one of the ones who will criticize me wanted troops on the ground — our troops on the ground — in Libya. I think it was a mistake to be in Libya,” he continued.
Paul, who won the non-binding straw poll at February’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which is geared toward young GOP activists, also went after Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, calling her a “hero of civil forfeiture.”
Other GOP candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have by contrast said the Senate should quit stalling and confirm Lynch as Obama’s pick to replace Eric Holder.
Clinton fared no better with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who praised the two-day summit as an impressive showcase of conservative-minded leaders and cracked, “You know, the Democratic version of this, I’m pretty sure, is Hillary Clinton having a conversation with a Chipotle clerk.”
As one of the many candidates who lambasted the Obama Administration on foreign policy, the senator also snapped that the White House might wake up to security threats “if only the terrorists attacked a golf course.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tethered Clinton to Obama as exemplars of a Washington removed from average Americans’ economic realities. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal slammed Obama as a president “intent on dividing us by class, by geography, by race, by gender, by income.”
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina flatly stated that Clinton must never become president — and noted she’d been asked in a TV interview whether a woman’s biology bars her from the highest office in the land.
“Not that we have seen examples, ever, of a man’s judgment being clouded by hormones — including in the Oval Office,” she said archly.
A Clinton spokesman declined comment.
