Hillary the Unconventional warrior

MINNEAPOLIS - Casting her Republican rivals as callow, reckless and unschooled in world affairs, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sought Tuesday to showcase her long national security experience in the face of renewed fears about homegrown terror threats.

Clinton took advantage of a previously scheduled fundraising party here to use Minneapolis as a platform from which to address the specific problem of domestic radicalization. Ten Minnesota men have been charged with attempting to join the Islamic State, and many more are believed to support the network based in Syria and Iraq.

Clinton did not recommend scrapping or overhauling any of Obama's domestic counterterrorism initiatives. She has recommended taking additional steps overseas, an implicit criticism that Clinton has acknowledged but has not dwelled upon.

More than 80 percent of voters in a recent Quinnipiac University national poll said they saw it as very likely or somewhat likely that terrorists will pull off a mass attack inside the United States in the near future. That sense of imminent threat on the U.S. homeland was high following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but this had largely subsided.

Terrorism and national security have surpassed economic concerns as the top issue for many Republicans this election cycle, and the topics are also a major factor behind Democratic decision-making. Clinton's campaign is still largely organized around middle-class economic empowerment, but she has sought to showcase her national security experience and hawkish policy positions in the wake of the mass attacks in Paris and California.

Her speech at the University of Minnesota follows other recent remarks laying out a broad plan to combat the Islamic State militarily and diplomatically, as well as her invitation to technology companies to do more to weed out incitement and recruitment online.

She offered few other specifics about how to shut down Islamic State recruitment in the United States, prevent the flow of would-be fighters from the United States to join the Islamic State, and enlist Muslim communities to help discover and stop plots once they form. The Obama administration and state and local law enforcement agencies are already trying to do those things, with mixed success.

"Her long record of failure shows she cannot be trusted to protect America from the growing terrorist threat," the Republican National Committee said Tuesday.

"Clinton shares Obama's unpopular, failed strategy to combat ISIS," the RNC said, using one of the acronyms for the terrorist network.

Clinton met with local Muslim leaders ahead of her speech addressing terrorism and extremism within the United States, and she called Muslim-Americans our "first, last and best defense against homegrown radicalization."

She drew a standing ovation for urging Americans to "stand up against offensive, inflammatory, hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric."

Republicans accuse President Barack Obama of being slow to recognize the threat presented by the Islamic State and ineffectual once he did. By extension, they accuse Clinton of failing to act or sound the alarm more forcefully when she was Obama's first-term secretary of state.

"Bluster and bigotry are not credentials" to be commander in chief, Clinton said hours ahead of a Republican debate focused on terrorism and the security threat from the Islamic State extremist group. Clinton took sharp issue with comments from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and his closest challenger, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, that she characterized as dangerous taunts to Islamic State radicals that reinforce their view that the West is at war with Islam.

"Promising to carpet-bomb until the desert glows doesn't make you sound tough," Clinton said in an apparent reference to Cruz. "It makes you sound like you're in over your head."

Clinton laid out what she called a "360-degree strategy" to defend against recruitment of homegrown terrorists and to uncover plots before an attack occurs. The assault-weapon killings of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, this month have focused public attention on the threat posed by radicalized attackers who could enter the United States with little scrutiny - or do not need a visa at all - and have relatively easy access to weapons.

She called Tuesday for a reinstatement of the federal ban on assault weapons and said that the United States should tighten its visa requirements. With limited exception, anyone who has traveled to certain terror-prone trouble spots over the past five years should have to undergo a full background check to obtain a U.S. visa, she said.

Clinton called Trump's proposals to suspend Muslim immigration and stop the resettlement of Syrian refugees a rejection of the United States' founding principles.

"This is your country too, and I am proud to be your fellow American," Clinton said to sustained applause from a partisan audience that included several women in headscarves. Clinton was introduced by former vice president Walter Mondale and accompanied by Minnesota's two Democratic senators.

The latest of 10 young Somali-American men from the Minneapolis area charged with attempting to join the Islamic State was arrested Dec. 9. Minneapolis is home to a large Somali expatriate community, some of whom came to the United States as refugees. .