Sen. Rand Paul has emerged as the chief Clinton critic within the likely 2016 Republican presidential field, firing barbs against the former secretary of state and her husband as he tries to lead the attack on Democrats’ presidential front-runner.

The freshman senator walloped former President Clinton a number of times last year, including casting him as a sexual predator, and, in recent days, has turned his fire directly on Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying her excuses for poor email practices while serving as the country’s top diplomat are evidence of the Clintons’ “arrogance.”

“Here is the thing about the Clintons,” Mr. Paul said over the weekend at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. “The Clintons kind of think the law’s for like you ordinary people. You know, they think they are somehow above the law.”

Other potential Republicans have taken some shots, but Mr. Paul has been the most outspoken in targeting Mrs. Clinton — a move that activists said could both help him excite the GOP base and ease lingering doubts about his libertarian brand of politics.

Earlier this month, Mr. Paul also raised pointed questions about the Clinton Foundation’s decision to accept donations from foreign governments with poor human rights records during Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary of state.

Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank, said that many people believe the 2016 race is shaping up to be a foreign policy election, so it is important for Mr. Paul to show that he can take on Mrs. Clinton’s representing the Obama administration on the world stage.

“He is trying to walk through the idea of keeping onboard all the libertarians, but also keeping the social issue types with him and the foreign policy types with him,” Mr. Cannon said. “And going after Hillary is a way to show how you would at least handle the foreign policy side of this if you were to be [the] candidate.”

Democrats agreed that Mr. Paul is pandering to skeptical Republicans.

“Some of his views aren’t well regarded among the more hawkish parts of the party, and he may be using Clinton’s record to try and curry some favor with them,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist.

Some of the other GOP candidates aren’t as well placed to exploit the Clinton emails. Republican governors will likely face the same kinds of questions over whether they’ll release messages from their personal accounts.

But the temptation to bash Mrs. Clinton will also be there, and so could the ammunition — particularly with her husband’s presidential library due to release still more documents from her time as first lady.

Mr. Paul argues that Mrs. Clinton’s rejection of a government-issued email account and her decision to use her own email server may have compromised secret information.

Speaking on Fox News on Monday, Mr. Paul questioned whether Mrs. Clinton should be trusted.

“Here is the problem: She wasn’t obeying the law by keeping her email on a government server, and now we are supposed to trust her that she only deleted the ones that only had to do with her personal activities?” Mr. Paul said, adding that it raises questions about whether she has the judgment to be president.

Mrs. Clinton says she was abiding by the law, which she said allowed her to use a nongovernment account and gives her the power to decide which of her emails are public business and need to be turned over.

She didn’t turn them over to the State Department until nearly two years after she left office, however, and then only after a department request.

Mrs. Clinton said she believed that if she generally tried to email others on their official government accounts, those messages would be automatically stored (which was not the case at the time), and that this would be enough to comply with the law.

She also said she kept a single account because it was more “convenient” than carrying two devices.

The email controversy has not taken a major toll on her, and the 67-year-old is well positioned to walk away with the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. She also leads her likely GOP contenders in hypothetical matchups.

The latest Real Clear Politics average of surveys shows that her stiffest competition comes from Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and then Mr. Paul.

“Republican Party voters are understanding that she has strong numbers, she is very popular, and I am sure they are looking for a candidate that can beat the Democrat, and Rand Paul challenging her directly is a way that he can display his argument that he can do that,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and Political Library at Saint Anselm College, which has played host to several presidential contenders.

Mr. Paul’s renewed attacks on Mrs. Clinton follow a bitter series of exchanges last year, when the senator questioned whether Democrats, who accused the GOP of a “war on women,” would criticize Mr. Clinton for his “predatory behavior” against former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

And a year earlier, in 2013, Mr. Paul was one of the senators questioning Mrs. Clinton in a contentious hearing about the 2012 Benghazi attack. Mr. Paul said if he had been president, he would have fired Mrs. Clinton over her handling of the terrorist attack.

Jeff Kaufmann, Iowa Republican Party chairman, said Mr. Paul’s challenges as he approaches the Iowa caucuses next year will be not only to “justify some of the differences he has with some of his fellow Republicans” on foreign policy, but to also do more than bash Mrs. Clinton — a challenge the entire GOP field will have.

“We are a very skeptical and a very discerning group of voters out here, and I don’t think being against Hillary is going to be enough,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “I think our candidates are going to spell out what they are for as well.”

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.