Sen. Rand Paul's prickly exchange with Savannah Guthrie was "totally beautiful," and signals that the new crop of GOP presidential hopefuls will be just as combative with the media, veteran Republican consultant Mary Matalin says.
"[Sen. Marco] Rubio … he'll do it, and [Sen. Ted] Cruz will do it … they're not going to play the game," Matalin said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"[What Paul said] was beautiful, it was totally beautiful."
Paul, a first-term Kentucky Republican who this week declared he'll seek the 2016 GOP nomination, drew flack from the left for tussling with Guthrie as the NBC "Today" show host grilled him on his foreign policy views.
During the interview, Paul accused Guthrie of talking over him and editorializing after she asked about his alleged changing views on Iran and foreign aid for Israel.
"Why don't you let me explain instead of talking over me?" he told Guthrie. "Before we go through a litany of things you say I changed on. Why don't you ask me a question: 'Have you changed your opinion?' That would be a better way to approach an interview. No, no, no, no, listen. You editorialized …"
Afterwards, some liberal pundits accused Paul of having a problem with women.
But Matalin — the campaign director for President George H.W. Bush and an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney — said Paul was correct in lashing out.
She noted that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was "polite to a fault" during his failed 2012 campaign against President Barack Obama.
"What Republicans in general have a problem with is accepting the premise, letting the opposition set the agenda and then they're forever playing defense," Matalin said.
"I learned this from decades of debating with my husband [James Carville], another liberal … They distort your position and then you're trying to clean up.
"These guys have learned that lesson painfully, this new generation of candidates. They're not going to play."
Matalin predicted Hillary Clinton — who is expected to announce her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination Sunday on Twitter — is using social media as a "rose garden strategy to control access to her because she's not a good candidate."
"She learned one lesson from the last go around, which is you've got to have a good campaign structure, which takes a long time to get into place," Matalin said.
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