Gov. Chris Christie offered a cutting assessment of Hillary Rodham Clinton's electoral weaknesses recently, telling a group of energy executives that she lacked her husband's political talents and personal appeal. To punctuate the point, the New Jersey governor mischievously quoted President Barack Obama from a 2008 campaign debate.
"You're likable enough, Hillary," Christie said, according to two participants.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was unsparing in his critique, citing lackluster sales of Clinton's latest memoir as evidence that Americans have tired of her.
"She's had a hard time selling books and filling auditoriums," he sniffed to a table of campaign contributors, recalled a guest who heard him.
And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has mocked the newly wealthy Clinton as out of touch with working-class voters, calling a country music video produced recently on her behalf so contrived that "I almost fell out of the chair laughing."
At political fundraisers and party conferences, over intimate dinners and in casual telephone calls, top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are constructing an image of Clinton that is relentlessly unappealing: as rusty and unloved, out of step and out of date, damaged and vulnerable.
To win the party's nomination in a contest over which Clinton looms so large, likely candidates are now jockeying to appeal to several overlapping constituencies, including Republican activists who loathe her, donors who respect and fear her fundraising prowess, and party leaders who view her candidacy as a test of their attempts to modernize the Republican brand.
For a candidate to be taken seriously, said Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant, "party leaders need to know that you have a game plan and a path to victory against Hillary."
So to an unusual degree, given that she holds no office, Republican White House hopefuls are pitching their potential candidacies in relation to Clinton's, building their message around her strengths and weaknesses, and making the case for why they are best suited to challenge her, according to those who have spoken to them.
These people -- donors, operatives and advisers -- talked on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly betraying the confidence of officials who may seek the presidency.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, for example, has argued that his noninterventionist outlook on foreign policy would offer unique advantages in a head-to-head race against Clinton. His argument: By 2016, Clinton will be viewed as a champion of U.S. military action abroad, alienating younger voters of both parties exhausted by a decade of wars. Given the hawkishness of his likely Republican rivals, he alone, Paul says, can appeal to such disaffected youth.
It is a message Paul has delivered repeatedly to the likes of David and Charles Koch, the billionaire conservative industrialists, according to a person familiar with their conversations.
Cruz takes an entirely different approach, telling donors that Clinton's reputation as a moderate who can appeal to elements of the Republican Party necessitates the selection of a true conservative like himself. He says his brand of raw, unapologetic right-wing politics and policy can excite conservative voters long frustrated, in his telling, by the Republican Party's tendency to nominate ideologically bland, watered-down figures like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
His message: Moderate Republicans rarely win the White House, and their chances would diminish still further in a race against Clinton.
Republicans eyeing the White House are eager to diagnose Clinton's liabilities and shortcomings, however real or imagined. The biggest of them, they contend, is her deep connection to the Obama administration as secretary of state.
At a dinner for wealthy donors last week in Texas, a guest said, Perry predicted that Clinton would become ensnared in the "Barack Triangle" and was indelibly linked to what Perry said were the president's mixed economic record, foreign policy struggles and detached governing style. Cruz, latching on to the same theme, has begun referring to the "Clinton-Obama" agenda.
Asked about the Republicans' remarks, a spokesman for Clinton, Nick Merrill, said, "It's no secret they attack what they fear."
By laying out a plan of attack against Clinton, the Republicans have revealed just how eager they are to elevate themselves onto the same stage as her: globe-trotting diplomat, sought-after speaker, nominee all-but-in-waiting.
Wilson, the Republican consultant, recalled a candidate who warned donors that Clinton could raise $1 billion in a presidential campaign.
"It's a viable case," Wilson said. "There is only one or two people who can pull off that kind of financial lift against Hillary."
Two years before the election, some Republicans have already tired of the topic.
Fred Malek, a major Republican donor and fundraiser, said that after eight years of Democratic reign at the White House, his party should be drawing up elaborate plans for taking the country in a new direction.
"They shouldn't be thinking about running against Hillary," he said
A Section on 12/14/2014