Bill Clinton on GOP Candidates: Youth, Energy, and 'No Dummies'

Former President Bill Clinton had some words of praise — along with a great deal of pointed criticism — about the wide slate of Republicans seeking their party's presidential nomination in 2016.

"They've got a lot of youth, they've got a lot of energy, they've got some significant diversity and they're no dummies," the former president told CNN's Jake Tapper during a wide-ranging pre-taped interview that aired Sunday on "State of the Union."

The Clinton interview, taped in front of an audience at the annual Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in Denver, was timed to air on the network's State of the Union show the day after Hillary Clinton took center stage in New York City on Saturday.

"They're impressive," Clinton said, but he couldn't resist a few digs. "They believe what they believe. They still believe trickle-down economics works better than investment and their convictions are so great that they're undeterred by evidence and that's always amazing to me."

The former two-term president, though, said that what most surprised him was how many Republicans are seeking the nomination.

"It looks more like the Kentucky Derby than Belmont," he said, drawing a comparison between the 20-horse Kentucky Derby and the eight-horse Belmont Stakes. "But they're impressive. And they have some differences of opinion on the national security issues, and the incarceration issues and all that."

He said he does sympathize with GOP primary voters who are left with tough decision about who to choose, and questioned whether it is fair for some candidates to be eliminated from the televised debates.

"Generally, Republican primary voters, since you and I have been doing this, wind up voting for the person they think has the best chance to win," Clinton continued.

But still, he predicts that at some point, voters will be "moved by people who think they can influence the process to settle on the one that's most electable, because they figure they already got what they need."

There is already a GOP-controlled Congress, and "they just want to win the White House so bad, I get that," he continued. "But that's what makes it for an outsider that doesn't understand all the ins and outs of it. It will make it difficult to predict because I think they don't know, do they need somebody who is new? Do they need somebody who is seasoned? Do they need somebody who has got a forward leaning position on immigration, or will it disillusion their people and stay home? They got all these decisions to make. But in the end it's going to come down to who is the most electable candidate because they want to win."

But there is one thing that all the Republicans agree on, Clinton said, and that's on how to defeat his wife, the clear frontrunner for the nomination. All candidates have been attacking her, especially former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who recently staged a press conference of her own outside of a Clinton campaign event.

"They'll all sing in the choir about how bad Hillary was," Clinton said, "And it will be difficult for those who thought she was great when she was a secretary of state and went on record saying it."

But compared to the Republican field, whose candidates have been polling to within a few points of each other, Hillary Clinton dominates a Democratic field that has attracted challenges from former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

Clinton told Tapper he doesn't have any predictions about who will come out on top of the GOP field, and that even if he did "and I thought I knew who'd win, I probably still wouldn't say."

"I predict that at some point during this process, whatever they're debating and whatever the stories are, there will be a move by people who think they can influence the process to settle on the one that's most electable," he said.

Watch video here.

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