Several pundits called for Abedin to run for office instead of her husband. Critics: Abedin following Clinton plan

Huma Abedin has critics saying the long-time Hillary Clinton aide might just be taking a page out her boss’s playbook for her own future benefit.

While the initial reactions to Abedin standing by her husband and speaking to his character at Tuesday’s press conference included praise and bewilderment, others say her firm stance makes political sense — she’s following the road map and joining the ranks of her long time role model and boss who famously endured a similar experience with former president Bill Clinton, only to come out on top.


“As the many glowing profiles of Huma Abedin in recent months have noted, she learned a lot working as Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman since the 1990s,” the Atlantic’s Elspeth Reeve wrote Wednesday. “But maybe the biggest lesson Abedin learned was not just how to help her husband survive a sex scandal, but how to launch her own political career.”

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MSNBC’s Mika Brezezinski said what Abedin did at the press conference was “riveting,” adding that Abedin works for a woman who has been through a similar personal issue.

“A woman who is a pro at taking a bad situation, an embarrassing situation and owning it and winning in the long run. And that is someone who might be the next president of the United States, Hillary Clinton,” Brezezinski said.

But Abedin was also slammed for potentially using such a disgraceful and personal situation for future political benefit. Political media strategist Adam Weiss slammed Abedin in the New York Post, calling her “power hungry” and coming from the “Clinton school of forgiveness.”

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“They are that power hungry that she stands there and she accepts the absolute disgracefulness of serial cheating from her husband,” Weiss said. “Huma comes from the Clinton school of forgiveness — power is more important than dignity.”

Conservative radio host Monica Crowley said on Wednesday it’s clear Abedin is following Clinton.

“Her tendency would be to go the Hillary Clinton model,” Crowley said on Fox News. “It is clear that Huma, given her position with Hillary Clinton who is running for president in 2016, that she has a lot of personal ambition of her own. What may be taking place here is shared ambition on the part of both of them to achieve ever higher positions of power and using their marriages to do it.”

Fellow conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was slightly more direct, calling Abedin a “doormat”.

“Her loyalty is to Hillary Clinton and her role model is Hillary Clinton. Doormats. Doormats with the promise of a payoff later down the road,” Limbaugh said on Wednesday.

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Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift wrote that Abedin might have even taken this plan a step too far.

“This strategy worked for the Clintons politically. But after this latest press conference, I’m pretty sure that Abedin has stretched the Hillary mantle past the breaking point,” Clift said.

Others said Abedin is the clear winner of the situation, and several called for her to run for office instead of her husband.

“Money can’t buy the kind of political boost Huma Abedin is receiving. Like her mentor Hillary Clinton, the stand-by-your-man strategy will be her gateway to widespread popularity and respect,” Thomas Lifson wrote in the blog The American Thinker. “Huma Abedin is better-looking, better spoken, and more appealing than her role model. [Tuesday]’s performance (‘whole lotta therapy’) was superb, establishing Ms. Abedin as dignified, strong, and starting to look as American as apple pie.”

Tina Brown tweeted Wednesday “I say Huma for mayor - she has all the qualities he doesn’t.”

Whatever her motivation, some including Kirsten Powers, who used to date Weiner, said Wednesday that Abedin has one down side to standing by Weiner: She put her own credibility at risk.

“I do think she put her credibility on the line when she came out and did the press conference,” Powers said on Fox News. “Whether she wanted to be there or not, what does it say about a husband who lets his wife do that? It was extremely humiliating.”

Several calls for Weiner to drop out of the mayoral race have also used Abedin’s appearance at the press conference as a supporting argument.

“Whatever Abedin’s motivations, whether she is drawing on the love she proclaimed for Weiner or speaking out of shared ambition, it is simply wrong for Weiner to exploit a private relationship, about which the public knows nothing, as evidence of his worthiness for public office,” the New York Daily News editorial board wrote.