They have called Senator Elizabeth Warren “an extremely attractive candidate” in the 2016 presidential campaign. They have said that she is the “hottest commodity” in the Democratic Party and that she has demonstrated the “passion and intensity” that Hillary Rodham Clinton lacks.
Those glowing compliments are not from the liberal activists who are trying to persuade Ms. Warren to challenge Mrs. Clinton, who is expected to be the party’s leading contender in 2016. They come from conservatives who are eager to drum up a contentious Democratic primary and who see Ms. Warren, a first-term senator from Massachusetts, as best positioned to weaken, and potentially defeat, Mrs. Clinton.
On cable television and in private strategy sessions, conservatives are steadily stoking the flames of a movement to recruit Ms. Warren, who has said she will not run but whose anti-Wall Street economic message resonates with the liberal base of the Democratic Party.
“Please give us Elizabeth Warren. Please, God, let us have Elizabeth Warren,” said Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who is considering a presidential bid.
“I respect her because she has the courage to speak her convictions,” Mr. Huckabee said on Fox News.
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“She hates Wall Street for a very different reason than libertarians,” Mr. Darling said. “Yet they both would agree that the bailouts of Wall Street were a gaming of the system.”
Tucker Carlson, a libertarian political pundit, said Ms. Warren has an authenticity that resonates with both sides. “She has this spark of genuine ideological fervor, and I mean that as a compliment,” he said. “It’s not just pure opportunism.”
Ms. Warren, of course, has given the anti-Clinton movement plenty of fodder. She frequently says that income inequality is due, in part, to the economic and trade policies of President Bill Clinton. In her 2003 book, “The Two-Income Trap,” written with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, Ms. Warren accused Mrs. Clinton of snapping at her staff and of shifting her position on bankruptcy legislation when she became a New York senator in order to appease her Wall Street donors.
“As New York’s newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position,” Ms. Warren wrote. Republicans could not have said it better themselves.
