Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s comments that he doesn’t think President Barack Obama “loves America” have put potential Republican presidential contenders in a bind, caught between a desire to criticize the President and the need to respect the office of the presidency.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is contemplating a presidential run, tried to strike that balance in his comments to The Associated Press that while he had “no doubt” Obama loves America, “I just think his policies are bad for our nation.”
Another potential presidential contender, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, entirely refused to comment on Giuliani’s remarks.
“The mayor can speak for himself,” Walker said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I’m not going to comment on what the President thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well.”
GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said the difficulty for Republican presidential candidates lies in the attraction of taking aim at the President’s policies, which Americans are widely unhappy with, but avoiding taking aim at the President himself.
“Regardless of political party, no one wants to criticize the sitting President in that way because it can be taken the wrong way by a lot of people,” he said.
“But there is a concern and an alarm out there about the nature of this threat we’re facing in the Middle East,” O’Connell added, referencing a CNN/ORC poll out this week that showed a majority of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of ISIS and foreign policy.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another potential presidential contender, was perhaps most aggressive in walking that line. He acknowledged Obama “should have chosen different phraseology for his remarks.”
“The level of the President’s love for our country is immaterial at this juncture,” Jindal said, adding though, that Giuliani’s intended attack was “true.”
“The gist of what Mayor Giuliani said — that the President has shown himself to be completely unable to speak the truth about the nature of the threats from these ISIS terrorists — is true,” Jindal said in a statement.
O’Connell warned other Republicans to take an approach similar to Jindal’s, and be cautious of how they frame their attacks on the President.
“It’s not what you say, it’s what [the voters] hear,” he said.
Democrats seized on the comments as further evidence of how extreme the Republican Party can be. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at the DNC’s winter meeting it was fine for the parties to disagree and debate over policy.
“But for them, it’s more than that. It’s personal, and it’s ugly, and there’s no sign of it getting better,” she said.
She called on the developing GOP presidential field to “stand up, say, ‘enough.'”
“I would challenge my Republican colleagues and anyone in the Republican Party to say enough. They need to start leading,” she said.