Amidst the smoldering wreckage of the 2014 midterm elections, many Republicans have been quick to point to the results as a rejection by voters not only of President Obama and his policies, but also of Hillary Clinton.
But former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, also a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association who once weighed running for president himself, thinks placing blame on Bill and Hillary Clinton for Democrats’ losses is a bridge too far, he said Wednesday.
“I think it’s too much to say that this was a repudiation of the Clintons,” Barbour told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Nor was the outcome Tuesday necessarily about Americans embracing the Republican Party and giving the GOP a governing mandate, Barbour said, but about voters rejecting Obama and his administration wholesale.
“Most Republicans understand that yesterday’s election was a referendum on Obama and Obama’s failed policies and the bad results of those policies,” Barbour said.
“The American people have given us a chance to get back on the right track,” Barbour added. “This is not some great embrace of Republicanism. This is the American people giving us the ball back.”
With the notable exception of Barbour, tying the Clintons to Democrats’ woeful Election Day is already becoming a popular Republican trope.
“Up and down the ballots, these were the president’s candidates. These were the Clintons’ candidates,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said during a press conference Wednesday. “And they lost.”
Sen. Rand Paul, a likely Republican contender for the presidency in 2016, has been perhaps the most aggressive in needling the Clintons. Late Tuesday, Paul swiftly declared losing Democratic candidates “#HillaryLosers” on Twitter and Facebook.
“I think this election was basically a repudiation of the president, but also Hillary Clinton,” Paul said in an interview with NBC News.
