Liberal New York magazine essayist Frank Rich appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday and repeatedly blasted the GOP’s foreign policy views when stacked up against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Speaking to retiring moderator Bob Schieffer, the former New York Times critic and columnist argued that despite Hillary Clinton’s lackluster tenure as Secretary of State it’s a “credential they [Republicans] don’t have. Even if you think she wasn't a great Secretary of State it’s hard to take that away from her.”
So according to Rich, it doesn't matter how bad Clinton’s tenure at the State Department was, simply serving that role puts her far and above any of her potential GOP opponents, which makes her the only trustworthy candidate on foreign policy.
The New York magazine essayist went on to suggest that Clinton was the “red phone at 3:00 in the morning candidate and you have bunch of fresh-faced youngish Republicans for the most part who look like neophytes, before he proceeded to blast the “far to the right” foreign policy of the GOP:
And no matter how hawkish they are they all sort of sound the same. They’re going to have to put themselves far to the right, in sort of neocon territory to distinguish themselves from her. The one exception Rand Paul has already sort of cratered on his revolt on Republican foreign public policy.
Rich is no stranger to smearing conservatives on a regular basis and has repeatedly shown himself to be nothing more than a far-left columnist. In 2009, Rich argued that Glen Beck and Sarah Palin were “re-enacting Stalinism” over their involvement in an upstate New York Congressional race.
Writing in the New York Times in 2011, Rich tried to blame the right for the Arizona shooting that nearly took the life of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords saying “[t]hat Loughner was likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there.”
During the 2012 presidential election, Rich also called on President Obama to “nuke” Mitt Romney with attack ads similar to LBJ’s “Daisy” commercial.
See relevant transcript below.
CBS’s Face the Nation
May 17, 2015
BOB SCHIEFFER: What do you think, Frank Rich, lot of focus on foreign policy so far in this campaign. Do you think that is going to go right on in to when we get into the final years of a campaign season? They seem to last a couple of years.
FRANK RICH: The final decade it feels like already. I feel, look, if we're at war which we're unlikely to be, and I hope we won't be, of course it would be enormous issue. But short of that, I'm not sure, I also feel if Republicans want to distinguish themselves from Hillary Clinton it’s probably not a good way to do it. She is the most hawkish national Democrat can be. She was Secretary of State which is a credential they don't have. Even if you think she wasn't a great Secretary of State it’s hard to take that away from her.
She is the red phone at 3:00 in the morning candidate and you have bunch of fresh-faced youngish Republicans for the most part who look like neophytes. And no matter how hawkish they are they all sort of sound the same. They’re going to have to put themselves far to the right, in sort of neocon territory to distinguish themselves from her. The one exception Rand Paul has already sort of cratered on his revolt on Republican foreign public policy. So I don't see even the percentage for Republicans I think the public as a whole much more interested in domestic issues, particularly as always the economy.
