Skip to main content

Clinton 'Pre-Campaign' in Full Swing for 2016 Bid?

Share This article

It's not an official campaign schedule but it feels like one.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton have made 14 appearances in the last week.

The Washington Post calculates that Clinton and her political operation got 98 mentions on the Sunday talk shows this past weekend. Next month Clinton will release her new book, Hard Choices.

As her "pre-campaign" gains speed, Republicans are also mobilizing, making clear some of the ways they'll go after Clinton, starting with her age and health.

"I'm not a doctor. What I do know is that the issue is going to come up as it does for any person running for president," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Priebus was alluding to Clinton's fall in December 2012. She suffered a concussion and doctors discovered a blood clot in her head.

Republican consultant Karl Rove is suggesting that Clinton suffered a brain injury.

"She is going to have to cough up these medical records," Rove said on Fox News Sunday, adding "She'll be 69 at the time of the 2016 elections."

Of course, Ronald Reagan was 69 when he first took office in 1981 and John McCain was 72 on Election Day in 2008.

Bill Clinton is defending his wife publicly.

"Now they say she's really got brain damage," he said, chuckling. "Well if she does, then I must be in really tough shape because she's still quicker than I am."

Clinton will have to answer tougher questions in the months ahead. The House Select Committee on Benghazi is vowing to get to the bottom of what happened and will investigate how, as secretary of state, she handled the attacks in Libya and the aftermath.

"She clearly bears responsibility for whatever the State Department did or didn't do," former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

There's no rush for Clinton to announce her 2016 intentions anytime soon, which makes the coming months critical as she makes her final decision.

Share This article

About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim