Rand Paul: ‘Clinton Democrats’ became ‘Hillary’s losers’ during election landslide

Sen. Rand Paul said a host of unsuccessful Democratic Senate candidates he branded “Hillary’s losers” on Facebook tried to associate themselves with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and separate themselves from President Obama, when the reality is there’s not much daylight between the two.

“My point is to make that they all ran to separate themselves from the president, they wanted to be associated as ’Clinton Democrats,’ and they all were soundly rejected,” the Kentucky Republican said Friday on “Fox and Friends.” “So there is a message here about Hillary Clinton as much as there is a message about the president.”

Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who lost to presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky this year, for example, famously refused to divulge whether or not she voted for President Obama, instead describing herself as a “Clinton Democrat.”

But Mr. Paul said the only reason President Bill Clinton was able to carry Kentucky was because Ross Perot was on the ballot.

“No Clinton has ever carried a majority in Kentucky, so I think they’re fooling themselves in the south, and also the 1990s was a long time ago - it was another era,” he said. “There aren’t many conservative Democrats left; the party has become so liberal…I don’t know, I don’t think there is such a Clinton cachet as there once was.”

Mrs. Clinton did trounce Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary in the state, taking almost two-third of the vote.

Nevertheless, Mr. Paul, arguably more than any other potential 2016 GOP presidential hopeful, has worked to ensure Mrs. Clinton, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination if she runs, will not get a pass this time around.

“I think in the past, we haven’t gone after the opposing party’s nominee to say who they are and what they represent, and I think she is going to try to say, ’oh, I’m different than President Obama. He’s very unpopular, but I have different policies,’” he said. “Well, she was part of his administration and I really don’t know of many, if any, policies they disagree on.”