The GOP’s Battle Plan Against Hillary: Arguing That “She’s Old?”

The GOP is going to have to come up with a lot more than just age if they end up facing off against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Hillary Clinton Speaking 2

In what I’m pretty sure is his first piece for The New York Times, Jonathan Martin, formerly of Politico, lays out what seems to be becoming the central Republican message against Hillary Clinton, who seems likely to be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016. That message seems to boil down to pointing out that she’s old:

The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton’s age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.

Despite her enduring popularity, a formidable fund-raising network and near unanimous support from her party, Mrs. Clinton, Republican leaders believe, is vulnerable to appearing a has-been.

“Perhaps in the Democratic primary and certainly in the general election, there’s going to be an argument that the time for a change of leadership has come,” said the Republican strategist Karl Rove. “The idea that we’re at the end of her generation and that it’s time for another to step forward is certainly going to be compelling.”

A yesterday-versus-tomorrow argument against a woman who could be the last major-party presidential nominee from the onset of the baby boom generation would be a historically rich turnabout. It was Mrs. Clinton’s husband, then a 46-year-old Arkansas governor, who in 1992 put a fellow young Southerner on the Democratic ticket and implicitly cast the first President George Bush as a cold war relic, ill equipped to address the challenges of a new day. Mr. Clinton then did much the same to Bob Dole, a former senator and World War II veteran, in 1996.

A Republican approach that calls attention to Mrs. Clinton’s age is not without peril, and Democrats predict that it could backfire.

Indeed the perils here seem fairly self-evident. For one thing, arguments that stem, either explicitly or subtly, from the idea that the candidate is “too old” for the job of the President haven’t generally been all that successful. Mrs. Clinton will be roughly the same age that Ronald Reagan was when he ran for President in 1980, for example, and he was able win quite handily. When the question came up again in the 1984 campaign, when Reagan was older than any other person who had ever run for President and had just been through a debate performance that had some questioning whether he was too old and tired for another term in office. Reagan responded to those criticisms with what may have been the most memorable moment in any Presidential debate, only to follow it up later with a thorough refutation of an argument Walter Mondale had made about defense spending. What those incidents teach us is that making a campaign about an opponents age can often end up backfiring, especially when there are independent forces driving the campaign, such as the economy and national security in 1980 and 1984.

In the case of Clinton specifically, though, it strikes me that an attack based on age would be especially problematic because it poses the danger of turning into an attack on a woman based on her age, which I’d suggest has the potential to be a far different animal than simply pointing out a la Reagan or McCain that a candidate is older. Indeed, how long would it take before some idiotic conservative pundit, or even a member of Congress, made a comment about Clinton as the “Old Lady,” or worse. As Allahpundit puts it, at that moment it would be welcome to the War On Women 2.0. Moreover, if Clinton maintains the relatively high favorability numbers that she has now going into the campaign, it’s hard to see how such a strategy could even possibly work, and how it could not backfire.

Michael Tomasky ascribes the idea that the GOP can beat Hillary by contrasting her with a younger candidate like, say, Marco Rubio, to their ongoing failure to speak to a whole host of minority groups:

Republicans make the same mistake all the time with groups they don’t normally talk to or know much about, whether it’s African-Americans or Latinos or young people. They think they’ll change loyalties on the basis of symbolism. But people turn out not to be that stupid. They actually pay some attention to substance, and the GOP stands against what young people support in almost every particular.

(…)

Direct attacks on Clinton’s age will, if history is a guide, go overboard and backfire; and as for rebranding the GOP as the forward-looking party of young people, well, that has to start with changing policy positions that the party has no ability to change. Other than that, great idea.

That brings us to Allahpundit’s idea that the GOP should concentrate on Hillary’s “old ideas” rather than her age:

The “old news” message is really just an anti-establishment message at base: The problem with Hillary isn’t that she’ll be almost 70 by election day, it’s that she’ll have been a Beltway institution for close to 25 years at that point. If, like many Americans, you’re disgusted with the federal government generally and Congress in particular, why nominate someone who’s been a “co-president,” senator, and Secretary of State, and not particularly effective in any role?

On some level, this isn’t a bad suggestion. Electing a candidate of the same party after a two term Presidency has not been a common event in recent American history, especially since the adoption of the 22nd Amendment. Kennedy followed Eisenhower, Nixon followed Kennedy/Johnson, Carter followed Nixon/Ford, Bush followed Clinton, and Obama followed Bush. The only exception to this pattern over the course of fifty years was the election of George H.W. Bush after eight years of Ronald Reagan, and Bush only managed to last for one term. There’s at least some support then for the idea that, at some point, the American public gets burned out on a particular political party controlling the White House. Might that happen in 2016? It’s possible, even with someone as currently personally popular as Clinton heading the top of the ticket. At the same time though, that requires the GOP to be able to present a credible alternative. In order to do that, they’re not going to need just a young, dynamic candidate that looks good on television, they’re going to need a platform of ideas that appeals to the voting public. We saw how that worked out in 2012, and the party has shown no real inclination toward changing it’s platform in the slightest respect. The way that the immigration debate has gone so far is the best exhibit of that, I would submit.

All bets are off, of course, if Mrs. Clinton decides not to run. At that point, the Democrats will have as wide open a field as Republicans will and, of the names that have been mentioned as second-tier Democratic candidates, none of them seems to be particularly well-suited to being the center of the kind of mass appeal campaign we saw from the Obama camp in 2008 and 2012, and that we’d likely see from the Clinton campaign. Additionally, things could be very different if the Obama years end with an economic downturn or an international crisis that calls the record of the Administration that Clinton was a major part of for four years into serious doubt. At the moment, though, it sees pretty clear that the GOP is going to have to come up with with a lot more than they appear to have now if they end up facing off against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 General Election.

FILED UNDER: 2016 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Rob in CT says:

    Oy. It’s 2013.

    Also, too: political campaigns will throw whatever they can at the opposition and hope something sticks. Old will be a part of it, of course. This is an argument that has been made many times, and mostly doesn’t work. But hey, maybe it’ll stick, right? Throw it.

    They’ll throw Benghazi! of course, because they can’t help it.

    They’ll throw Radical Leftist, of course, because… they can’t help it.

    They’ll throw whatever their best code for uppity b*tch is nowadays.

    And more besides. Maybe enough will stick. Maybe not.

    The whole “THE PLAN” idea is stupid, IMO. There’s not 1 avenue of attack, ever.

  2. Gold Star for Robot Boy says:

    America’s next presidential election won’t be held for another 3 years and 4 months, and already the GOP’s panic is obvious.

    Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of (old, white) guys.

  3. Peter says:

    One potential problem for Clinton is the blood clot that caused her to drop out of sight for a while last December. If she minimizes its seriousness, Republicans might claim that she exaggerated or fabricated it in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid testifying about Benghazi. If she acknowledges that it was a serious condition, or if it should recur, voters will worry that she might indeed be too old or sickly to serve as president.

    Clinton’s best-case scenario, which in fact probably will be the case, is that most people will have forgotten about the health scare by the time election season rolls around.

    If opponents raise the issue of her age, Clinton’s best defense may be to raise the obvious point that she is a she. Women live on average seven years longer than men, and seem to enjoy better health than men in their older years. A 69-year-old woman is really equivalent to a man of 62 or 63, and no one is going to say that a man of that age is too old.

  4. Anderson says:

    I saw that article, and immediately noted that the 1st GOP expert it cited was Stu Stevens.

    Stu “People Who Don’t Like Trump Aren’t Romney Voters Anyway” Stevens.

    Stu “The GOP’s Answer to Mark Penn” Stevens.

    I saw little need to read any further.

  5. teo says:

    The thing that strikes me about this line of attack is the reluctance the GOP shows to actually have an argument based on ideas. I mean to say, Republicans told us for a decade that if we raise taxes, the economy will crater. They told us that if Obama is elected, terrorists will have an ally in the White House. And then they told us that if he is reelected, the economy will perform poorly because Obama’s a clueless political hack who has no business managing an economy.

    All of these things turned out to be false. The economy isn’t exactly booming but it’s not tanking either. So Republicans have to turn the attention to another topic — one like Hillary’s age — because their other efforts have not worked.

  6. Gromitt Gunn says:

    I think they should add in “shrill” and “cankles.” What could possibly go wrong?

  7. Fu#kObama says:

    Eventually the GOPEstablishment will take off the gloves and bring up all the crimes Hillary is responsible for, they will lay out why she should not be president and the economy willbe in the tank worse than it is now because of Obamacare. Hillary will be forced to defend it and she will do a awful job of it. Then…..

    The GOP Establishment will run another RINO like McCain and Mittens, probably Jeb Bush along with Jon Huntsman, and the GOP base will vote for a third party and Hillary will be POTUS.

  8. gVOR08 says:

    …it poses the danger of turning into an attack on a woman based on her age…

    Obama caught them a little flat footed. It took them into ’10 to figure out how to dogwhistle, ‘The sheriff is a n—.” so the soccer mom’s couldn’t hear it. They have a year or two to practice before the ’16 campaign gets serious. They’ll figure it out.

  9. Tony W says:

    She seems like a person of good character. I am sure Mrs. Clinton will not hold her opponent’s youth and inexperience against him or her.

  10. Andre Kenji says:

    @Anderson:

    Stu “The GOP’s Answer to Mark Penn” Stevens.

    Mark Penn has several victories in his career, Stuart Stevens does not.

  11. stonetools says:

    Dunno if the party whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan ( oldest person ever to be elected President) can effectively campaign against Hillary’s age.How old was John McCain when he ran ? This is not a serious line of attack. If this is the Republican’s’ hay-maker, then the Democrats can rest easy.
    If somehow this attack gains traction, one way to defuse it would be if Hillary promises to step down after one term, and runs with a young VP candidate ( Warner? O’Malley? Schweitzer? Patrick?) which she can groom to run in 2020 with her endorsement.

  12. Tillman says:

    Frankly, the blood clot concerns me more than her age.

  13. PJ says:

    Electing a candidate of the same party after a two term Presidency has not been a common event in recent American history, especially since the adoption of the 22nd Amendment. Kennedy followed Eisenhower, Nixon followed Kennedy/Johnson, Carter followed Nixon/Ford, Bush followed Clinton, and Obama followed Bush. The only exception to this pattern over the course of fifty years was the election of George H.W. Bush after eight years of Ronald Reagan, and Bush only managed to last for one term. There’s at least some support then for the idea that, at some point, the American public gets burned out on a particular political party controlling the White House. Might that happen in 2016?

    Don’t worry, electing a woman as President is not a common event in American history. At all. So obviously whatever man the GOP picks will win.
    Well, unless that man isn’t white, because electing a President who isn’t white is a really uncommon event in American history.

    For a more serious point, I’d argue that a candidate and the party she or he represents must be seen as actually be able to govern.

    Just because someone is burned out on the Democrats doesn’t mean that that person is willing to elect the village idiot for a four year term…

  14. michael reynolds says:

    I’m going to differ. Bringing it up now plants doubts related to age. What’s needed for the pay-off is some sort of incident — a heart problem, for example. A fall and broken hip. You plant the idea now, and you hope she trips down the stairs in the next three years. The target isn’t voters writ large, it’s Democrats. The GOP is (rightly) scared peeless of Hillary. They’d love to see a primary challenge against her, and if they get us talking about age and then Hillary has to go in for some kind of surgery. . .

    It’s pathetic, but they’re desperate. And a 10% chance of something working out beats total, pre-emptive surrender.

  15. bk says:

    @Fu#kObama:

    Eventually the GOPEstablishment will take off the gloves and bring up all the crimes Hillary is responsible for

    You mean like the Vince Foster murder?

  16. Are the same people complaining that Clinton is too old the same ones that want John Bolton to run?

  17. al-Ameda says:

    @Fu#kObama:

    With a “name’ like that all I can say is ‘stay classy my friend’

  18. Caj says:

    Hillary’s old! That’s the best they can come up with? Of course they don’t have any old fogies in the Republican party do they? Mitch McConnell could give Methuselah a run for her money for a start! The trouble is they are scared witless of Hillary and with good reason. No one is more qualified to take over from President Obama than Hillary Clinton. Run Hillary run. They have no one in that party that could hold a candle to her.

  19. Matt Bernius says:

    @Fu#kObama:

    The GOP Establishment will run another RINO like McCain and Mittens, probably Jeb Bush along with Jon Huntsman, and the GOP base will vote for a third party and Hillary will be POTUS.

    Funny story, both McCcain and Mittens won the GOP Primaries. So apparently, enough of the base liked both of them to nominate them over teh realz conservatiz. Or were the primaries rigged?

    I mean, if the GOP base was so powerful (and the country was waiting to vote for a realz conservatiz) why isn’t there President Gingrich? Or President Cain? Or President Palin? You know, all the people the base loves?

  20. steve says:

    Man, this GOP is a mensa convention, ain’t it?

  21. stonetools says:

    The problem for the Republicans is not really Clinton. It is that they have no ideas and that their bench suxxx.
    Even if Clinton bows out and the Democrats run their second string , a pair like Biden-Schweitzer or Cuomo-Warner has to be at least favored against say, Ryan-Santorum or Huckabee-Daniels ( to come up with likely Democratic and Republican tickets). Put Clinton on top of any Democratic ticket and we’re talking landslide.
    My guess is that a Clinton-anybody ticket easily replicates the 2012 map and maybe the 2008 map, with the Republicans having to defend Missouri and Arkansas. Without Clinton, the Democrats get the 2012 map minus Florida.
    But of course, this is three years out , so such speculation means nothing really.

  22. MarkedMan says:

    The rational members of the Repubs will know this is a disaster, but their base will drag them down anyway. This is a base that likes their women leaders in the Palin/Bachman mold and are so repulsed by a woman who doesn’t fit that they won’t be able to keep the incredulous contempt from their voices. And the forty-something women in their party, even in the base, will get the message and walk into that booth and pull the lever for Hillary and come out and sweetly smile when their husband goes off on what an ugly old b*tch she is. And start documenting his assets for the divorce.

  23. Buffalo Rude says:

    @bk:

    You mean like the Vince Foster murder?

    My square in the office pool is “personally ordered the attack on the Benghazi consulate.”

  24. Just 'nutha' ig'rant cracker says:

    Well stonetools beat me to it (and eloquently at that) but here goes an attempt at a snarky version:

    we’re at the end of her generation and that it’s time for another to step forward is certainly going to be compelling.

    Now all they have to do is find someone who can actually run.

  25. Kylopod says:

    Hillary is the same age as Mitt Romney, both born in 1947. If Romney had won in 2012, presumably Republicans would not claim he was too old to run for reelection in 2016.

  26. Woody says:

    Meh – it’s 2013. While I agree with Mr Reynolds in that it’s never too early to plant seeds of doubt that may produce fruit later (events willing), this nonsense is nothing more than a reporter posting something referencing some GOP hustlers looking for relevance and sinecure.

    Though, like bk, I totally think Vince Foster! is a blue-ribbon winner that cannot be promoted enough.

  27. john425 says:

    GOP ad opens with Hillary reminding us SHE’s the best one to answer the red phone at 3AM. Cut to testimony about Benghazi and she says “What does it matter- they’re dead”.

    Besides—she was ineffective as Secretary of State. How many “special envoys” did Obama appoint around her? Six? Ten? What is the Russian word for RESET, BTW?

  28. Argon says:

    Republicans make the same mistake all the time with groups they don’t normally talk to or know much about, whether it’s African-Americans or Latinos or young people.

    Ha! So what we could deduce from this is that Republican leaders don’t know much about older women because they trade in their first spouses for younger, trophy wives.

  29. Gromitt Gunn says:

    @john425: I love comments like this, because they’re such a good example of right wing epistemic closure. I am absolutely certain that you really believe that what you’re writing is a) true and b) would make an amazing attack ad on Hilary that would be a total game changer.

  30. Tillman says:

    @john425: Sorry, that ad only works with the causality-impaired.

    Are you moronic, dare I say retarded, enough to really think that ad makes sense? Thinking it plays among the average voter is different, but do you think it makes sense at all?

    See, if you think it makes sense, that’s a sure sign of deeper bias, and you don’t want bias clouding your decisions, do you?

  31. anjin-san says:

    @ john425

    Thousands of Americans dead in the unnecessary Iraq war, and all the right had so say was “this is war, men die.” Four Americans dead in Libya, and the right thinks is is the worst disaster in history.

  32. michael reynolds says:

    @john425:

    Can I tell you why we’re going to beat you again? It’s not just that every policy position you have is wrong. It’s that you people are stupid.

    Stupid as in Mitt Romney sitting around on election night thinking he was going to win stupid. Just stupid.

  33. Jenos Idanian says:

    There’s a hell of an easy way to sink her.

    “Mrs. Clinton, what would you consider some of your proudest accomplishments, both in the Senate and at the State Department?”

  34. OzarkHillbilly says:

    That brings us to Allahpundit’s idea that the GOP should concentrate on Hillary’s “old ideas” rather than her age:

    Pretty rich seeing as all the GOP’s ideas come from the 19th century.

  35. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Tillman:

    Frankly, the blood clot concerns me more than her age.

    I’ve been living with the threat of blood clots for 4 or 5 years. My mother lived with it for 50+ years. It is nothing that can not be managed. Don’t sweat it.

  36. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @PJ:

    Just because someone is burned out on the Democrats doesn’t mean that that person is willing to elect the village idiot for a four year term…

    I have to point out that we did elect W for 8 years.

  37. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I have to point out that we did elect W for 8 years.

    Correction: 4 years, but this was after we had experienced his idiocy for the first 4 years.

    Never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate.

  38. G.A.Phillips says:

    To old? How about that she is a stupid lying *****? Don’t matter to you fools as long she runs on advancing infanticide and butt piracy.

    All that matters to the left these days. Murdering babies and normalizing perversion. Oh, and brain washing peopleKids into it, I guess.

    You people are a sad waste of time and energy.

  39. becca says:

    @G.A.Phillips: No more Viagra for you, mister!

  40. Ebenezer_Arvigenius says:

    Don’t matter to you fools as long she runs on advancing infanticide and butt piracy.

    Lame troll is lame.

  41. Neil Hudelson says:

    Tell me more about this butt piracy. You have piqued my interest. May I sign up somewhere?

  42. Moosebreath says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    “Tell me more about this butt piracy.”

    Yo-ho-ho and a buttle of rum.

  43. Tillman says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Sure, but neither of you were President of the United States. A uniquely stressful job just going off how everyone who comes out of it seems to be prematurely aged.

    I’m just saying, I’m going to pay special attention to her choice for VP.

  44. Barry says:

    @stonetools: “Dunno if the party whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan ( oldest person ever to be elected President) can effectively campaign against Hillary’s age.How old was John McCain when he ran ?”

    That would only be a problem for honest and consistent people.

  45. Barry says:

    @Neil Hudelson: “Tell me more about this butt piracy. You have piqued my interest. May I sign up somewhere? ”

    Planning on ‘hoisting’ the ‘Jolly Roger’, are we?

  46. rudderpedals says:

    I am to be enjoying your Terry and the Pirates fanfic.

  47. Matt Bernius says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    Tell me more about this butt piracy.

    @Beastie Boys

    “Professor, what’s another word for ‘pirate treasure’?”
    “Well, I think it’s ‘booty‘. Booty, booty, that’s what it is.”

  48. Latino_in_Boston says:

    Well, they *could* come up with better policies that appealed to a majority of Americans, but then they wouldn’t be the current incarnation of the GOP, would they?

  49. john425 says:

    I am getting trashed for my thoughts on an effective TV ad against Hillary’s candidacy but I don’t see any defense of her “expertise” or achievements and accomplishments. As I noted before, Obama appointed special envoys around her to do the heavy lifting and she was sent off to the hinterlands to accomplish, well…nothing.

    Let’s not forget that she was beaten by her own party’s neophyte; a , know-nothing. do-nothing kid who has run the country into the ground. Will she defend him in 2016? Don’t count on it.

  50. anjin-san says:

    run the country into the ground.

    God knows we all miss those happy times in late 2008 – before Obama wrecked everything.

  51. MarkedMan says:

    @john425: There’s not much point in arguing with you; you don’t like Hillary and I’m sure there is little that could be said to change your mind. But for others here it is worth pointing out the brilliant State Dept. handling of the China Islands issue. Basically the Chinese staked claim to islands currently belonging to at least seven other countries and which, no coincidence, hugely extends their territorial waters, fishing grounds and control of the sea lanes. They made it very clear that they would not negotiate such claims as a whole but only with each country individually. Hillary showed up at a Pacific pow wow and orchestrated an almost unanimous rebellion against this policy, with leader after leader standing up, looking the Chinese delegate in the eye, and telling him they were treating this as a regional issue and they were inviting the US to participate as well. . The Chinese government is still seething and HC is viewed as the brains behind the effort – they are not happy she may be President.

  52. john425 says:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOSj8yUCIAMQSHL.jpg:large

    The above link shows Egyptian anti-Morsi demonstrators telling Hillary she’s not welcome there. Way to go Hillary!

  53. Paul Hooson says:

    The same tactic didn’t work at all against Ronald Reagan who won two landslides and was one of the most popular presidents ever, despite many foreign policy problems as well as scandals.