Lincoln Chafee refrained from blasting Hillary Clinton when he announced Wednesday he was running for president. Thursday, he wasn’t so restrained.
“We’re going to be compromised trying to win the election in 2016 if our nominee supported the war in Iraq,” he told CNN’s “New Day.”
Chafee, the former Rhode Island senator and governor, is criticial of Clinton for her 2002 to give President George W. Bush broad authority to wage war in Iraq. Chafee, then a Republican, voted no.
Yet in his speech Wednesday declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, he tore into Bush and did not mention Clinton. Asked why not, he said later, “The time will come.”
It’s come. On CNN Thursday, Chafee said of the current situation in the Middle East, “How did we get into this endless tragic quest and quagmire? Who made the mistakes that got us there? What are we doing there? That’s a big issue in 2016.
“This should be a Republican war, a Republican mess.”
As a result, he said, “We can’t have as Democrats our nominee having supported this war resolution back in 2002. We live with all the problems today. “
He also blasted Clinton for being involved in unending controversy, citing recent poll numbers showing the percentage of people who find her untrustworthy is up.
“It’s the long record going back over decades of questionable ethical practices,” he said. “It seems like it just never stops.”
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