Hillary Clinton has budded in the past week into a candidate who's not afraid to stick it to Republicans and, in particular, Jeb! Bush. We first
got a glimpse of this at the National Urban League conference last week where Jeb! was scheduled to speak after Hillary. She preemptively wielded his "Right to Rise" campaign slogan like a dagger.
“I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a right to rise and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare, or repealing Obamacare,” Clinton charged. “People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care. They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you can’t seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.”
It was a direct hit that pulled the rug out from under Jeb! before he even reached the stage. Jeb!—one of only two GOP candidates who addressed the conference—was clearly aiming to have a hands-across-aisle Kumbaya moment at the conference. But Clinton deprived him of that by forcing a conversation about what his policies really mean for many Americans and, in this case, many black Americans in particular.
But things really heated up this week after Jeb! made the completely unforced error of wondering aloud whether "we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues." Hillary pounced on that within an hour or two of its utterance, saying, "I guess women's health isn't a priority for him."
"I would like to ask him, 'Gov. Bush, try telling that to the mom who caught her breast cancer early because she was able to get screening in time. Was her health not worth the money?' " Clinton said at a Denver event, according to CNN.
For more on Hillary taking it to the GOP, head below the fold.
Then came GOP debate day. During an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton, Clinton slammed the Republican candidates in advance of their big moment for the party's nationwide campaign to restrict voting rights.
“I don’t think I need to watch it to know that nearly everybody standing on that stage in the first or second debate has either actively sought to limit the right to vote in their state or supported the efforts to limit the right to vote," Clinton said.
Clinton
acknowledged that she didn't expect the GOP candidates to be held accountable for their actions during Thursday's Fox event, but she
promised to do so later.
"I can tell you, whoever I sit across from in the debates in the general election, I will be raising this, because this is such a fundamental constitutional right," Clinton said of voting rights issues.
It's not our first glimpse of Clinton criticizing Republicans. Last month, she
hit Jeb! on immigration, saying he didn't support a path to citizenship. “If he did at one time, he no longer does,” she told CNN.
She also criticized his suggestion in July that Americans "need to work longer hours."
But this week her barbs were particularly sharp and, in many cases, proactive. Rather than waiting for Republicans to stumble, she set them up for failure.
It's a welcome turn in my estimation. She's steering the conversation and honing attacks that can be used in the general election if she gets the nomination. It's a much different Hillary Clinton than we saw in 2008, when she appeared tentative about being viewed as too "lefty" in the primary. Instead, we're actually getting a glimpse of what she could bring to the general election campaign. The GOP response? Well, Jeb! has taken to whining about it.