CNN host Candy Crowley and The Hill Associate Editor A. B. Stoddard on Sunday agreed that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was playing “smart politics” by blaming former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the affair her husband had while he was president.

Looking toward the 2016 presidential race, Paul began hammering the Clintons several weeks ago, saying that Hillary Clinton was unqualified to defend women’s rights because her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had cheated on her with an intern in the White House.

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In one interview, Paul went as far as to accuse the former president of “violence” against women. And more recently, the Republican presidential hopeful declared that Bill Clinton should “return any contributions that Bill Clinton’s either raising for people or giving to people.”

“This is smart politics it seems to me,” Crowley told Stoddard on Sunday. “Here’s Rand Paul kind of expanding what his dad had, he’s got the libertarian side of him: He’ll take on drones, he’ll take on privacy, he’ll do that. Then, he’s got the social conservative side of him. I think that’s where this comes in.”

“He’s actually more in tune with the needs and the demographic liabilities Republican Party than most wannabe 2016 contenders,” Stoddard asserted. “He’s actually speaking right now to the Wall Street managerial wing of the party. It’s very worried that Chris Christie collapsed.”

“And what it’s saying is, ‘I have the guts to take on the Clintons, I think we need to, I know we don’t have a candidate right now,'” she continued. “So in the middle of this panic, he’s saying, ‘I can do this. And that actually is going to bring him more ears.”

Watch this video from CNN’s State of the Union, broadcast Feb. 9, 2013.