Hillary Clinton Takes to Twitter and Owns the Republican Debaters

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:40 pm

Hillary Clinton took “chaos candidate” Donald Trump and company out behind the proverbial woodshed last night as they fumbled about on stage, and took a switch to them. The Republican presidential hopefuls made their fifth debate a celebration of ignorance, hate and bigotry, and Clinton called them on it by live blogging on Twitter. Frank Bruni called it a “tense” debate in a New York Times op-ed, but I’d call it “appalling,” and Clinton seemed to agree.

Who we met at CNN’s televised debate last night was, in Hillary’s words, “7 Republican candidates who are totally unprepared to be commander-in-chief.” And by blazing away on twitter as they spewed, she showed American voters why.

Echoing president Obama, she condemned the repressive rhetoric coming from the stage, tweeting,

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We saw that Ted Cruz’s plan to defeat the Islamic State – targeting the “bad guys” – fell far short of brilliant, though it could be argued is superior to Trump’s plan to “penetrate” the Internet (we hope not sexually), and Hillary for America had a was quick to respond to it:

Hillary slapped down Cruz’s “strategy,” if that’s what we can call his jingoistic response to ISIL, in a tweet:

And she put the spotlight on the GOP itself by pointing out, in another tweet, that “The candidates on stage talk tough—but they won’t even support legislation preventing suspected terrorists from getting guns.” She added, in another tweet, that “I have news for [Republicans]—terrorists use guns to kill Americans. I think we should make it harder for them from to do that.”

Clinton, like Sanders and O’Malley, understands that combating the threat of radical jihadism, as represented by ISIL, calls for more than bombast and sweeping generalizations. As Clinton pointed out last night, “Shallow slogans don’t add up to a strategy.”

“We need serious leadership to keep us safe. Hateful words and extreme proposals that go against our values aren’t serious,” she tweeted. That serious leadership was seriously lacking on the debate stage last night.

Clinton, of course, does have a plan to defeat ISIL. Yes, she says we must choose resolve over fear, but unlike the GOP field, she doesn’t leave things at a catch-phrase. She shows we can defeat the Islamic State without another ground war, or without carpet bombing them till the sand glows, in Cruz’s words.

The Republicans last night pushed the idea that we’re at war with Islam, and Clinton corrected them:

The Republican Party offered America nothing new last night. The fifth debate was really just a call for more of the same, an uninformed approach based on what can only be characterized as a willful ignorance of the facts designed to breed fear and hatred of a constructed other.

Jeb Bush said of Donald Trump last night that “He’s failed in his campaign, it’s been a total disaster,” but the same could be said of the Bush campaign and that of every other Republican candidate. After all, if Trump, who is leading in the GOP polls is a disaster, where does that leave people like Jeb! who lag far behind?

Besides, as Hillary for America pointed out,

How does that work, exactly, that he’s a disaster, a “chaos candidate,” but you promise to support him?

Pointing the finger at immigrants or at Islam won’t save America, as Democrats know and have pointed out. While the Republican candidates were embarrassing themselves on CNN, Hillary Clinton was busy embarrassing them on Twitter. The Republicans owned their hate last night. We can give them that. But Hillary Clinton owned them.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.