It turns out that the president’s recent meal with Republican senators wasn't the only dinner party he's held this month with famous folks in Washington.

The president and the First Lady dined at the White House with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week, the White House confirmed Friday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest characterized the March 1 get-together as a “private dinner” but declined to offer further details about what was discussed.

While Obama’s former presidential rival Hillary Clinton has been taking time out of the spotlight after her departure from Foggy Bottom, former president Bill Clinton made headlines this morning with an op-ed advocating for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage act, which he signed in 1996.

The dinner was first reported by POLITICO.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 8, 2013 1:18 PM EST

"Booming," "sky-high," and "formidable" are just a sampling of the adjectives often used to describe Hillary Clinton's popularity, as DC pundits speculate about her perceived ambitions for 2016.

Pool / Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton attend a dinner for Kennedy honorees on Dec. 1, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

It's correct that Clinton (bested only by her husband Bill) enjoys the second highest approval rating of the public figures we asked about in our most recent NBC/WSJ poll. With a 58% positive / 28% negative split overall (and 100 percent name recognition), she has the kind of numbers that most political figures experience only in daydreams.

And it's also worth noting that neither she nor her husband are strangers to the political doldrums. In April 2008, as her prospects for a primary comeback waned, she had a net negative overall approval rating. When Bill Clinton left the presidency, after his controversial pardon of Marc Rich, just 34 percent of Americans viewed him positively. 

But as both have seen their numbers rebound to their current highs, are the Clintons' stores of political goodwill  -- built up by a couple that has largely stayed above the political fray since the end of the 2008 election -- resilient enough to bolster another run for the presidency by Hillary? 

Here's a look at where both Clintons stand right now with some of the groups that make up a campaign-building coalition.

(As with all deep dives into cross-tabs, insert caveat here that the margin of error for these subgroups is by definition higher than the poll's overall MOE of +/- 3.10%.) 

Hillary Clinton enjoys a 70 percent approval rating among women. Almost seven-in-ten Hispanic respondents and and 87 percent of African-Americans also said they view her positively.

While she is hardly beloved by the party she once derided for its penchant for "right wing conspiracy," her marks with Republicans are better than the current president's. A quarter of Republicans in the NBC/WSJ survey gave her positive ratings, while 52 percent of independents said the same. (Compare that to 10 percent of GOP respondents and 45 percent of indies for Obama.) 

Other than being slightly underwater among white men, she has net positive ratings among almost every key constituency, with notable strength among suburban women (+44 points), blue collar workers (+24 points) and retirees (+18 points). 

And then there's Bill. 

The former president, who once stood at the brink of impeachment, has nearly regained the popularity he enjoyed at his first inauguration in 1993. Just a quarter of the poll's respondents said they view Bill Clinton negatively. His numbers with Republicans and independents are comparable to his wife's, but his overall popularity is buoyed by strength among white men, who view him positively by a margin of more than 30 points. 

Both Clintons are also unsurprisingly strong with the Democratic base -- a data point that's notable only in light of the blistering attacks both launched on Barack Obama during the 2007-2008 primary battle. Disapproval for either barely registers among respondents who classified themselves as liberals or core Democrats. 

None of this is to say that the daily volleys of a possible campaign wouldn't create some cracks in the Clintonian armor; Hillary Clinton's approval rating dropped by 10 points in the two bruising months after the Iowa caucuses in 2008, for example. 

What goes up, both pols know, can come down. 

But for now, speculators, "formidable" is fine. 

CONCORD, N.H. – Riding Saturday night’s momentum from their first appearance at a rally together, President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton took to the small Granite State capital to make their case for the former’s second term.

Introducing the president, Clinton reminded the crowd how good New Hampshire had been to him when he first ran for president, leaving unsaid that the state also voted for his wife Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primary.

“Twenty years and nine months ago, New Hampshire began the chance for me to become president,” Clinton told the 14,000 people gathered in a park near the statehouse here.

But, he added, he was much more enthusiastic about campaigning for Obama now than he was for himself.

“Maybe because I have done this work. Maybe because I know how hard it is,” he said.

And Clinton also played the role of aggressive surrogate for the more reserved president, reviving the “Romnesia” attack line that Obama had deployed in the weeks leading up to the tone-changing Hurricane Sandy.

“As President Obama has told us there’s this great public health epidemic, this virus, sweeping across America causing a condition known as Romnesia,” Clinton said, “and the virus is so rampant that anybody’s vulnerable to gettin’ a little of it.”

For his part, Obama sought to draw a parallel between Clinton’s economic policies, popular around the country in retrospect, and his own.

“Just as we did when Bill Clinton was president, we gotta ask the wealthiest to pay a little bit more so we can reduce the deficit and still invest in the things we need to grow,” he said.

And Obama also gave an unusually detailed plug for some of the state’s down-ballot candidates, a nod to the Democrats’ fight to regain the House, as well as add more governors to the party roster.

“If you want to break the gridlock in Congress, you’ll vote for leaders who feel the same way whether they’re Democrats or Republicans or independents – folks like John Lynch, folks like Jeanne Shaheen, you’ll vote for candidates like Annie Custer, Carol Shea-Porter. You’ll make Maggie Hassan the next governor of New Hampshire,” he said.

Amanda Henneberg, spokeswoman for GOP nominee Mitt Romney's campaign, responded to Obama in a written statement: "With no rationale for re-election, President Obama has resorted to false, discredited attacks and a cynical closing message urging voters to choose ‘revenge.’ The people of New Hampshire, along with the rest of America, will choose Governor Romney’s optimistic vision for our country’s future and will vote for real change so he can get our country back on the right track."

The president continued his frenetic campaign pace, hopping on a plane to Florida after his New Hampshire stop.

Wrapping a whirlwind day of campaigning, President Barack Obama joined Bill Clinton — the last Democratic president, and vocal advocate for Obama — at a massive rally Saturday evening in northern Virginia. 

Before a crowd estimated at 24,000, Obama both literally and figuratively embraced Clinton, who has emerged as one of the most dogged advocates for the president's re-election campaign this fall. 

"He has been traveling all across the country for this campaign. He's been laying out the stakes so well that our team basically calls him the 'Secretary of Explaining Stuff,'" Obama said. "He was a great president; he has been a great friend."

As the final weekend of the 2012 campaign raised the question of which candidate, Obama or Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, would best move Washington past its intractable problems, Clinton, a president who has only grown more popular since leaving office, offered Obama his imprimatur. 

"As you see, I have given my voice in the service of my president," the hoarse former president said, following some local favorites, the Dave Matthews Band, at the rally in suburban Washington. 

NBC Politics coverage of the 2012 campaign:

• Uncertain finale looms amid weekend campaign blitz
• Romney implores Colorado for 'one last push'
• Biden zings Romney in Colorado
• Ryan travels to Pennsylvania, trying to put state in play
• Obama plays up 'trust' in battleground Ohio
• Obama aide explains 'voting is best revenge' comment
• Ryan: 'We believe in change and hope'
• Romney strikes optimistic tone as final weekend opens
• Polls: Obama stays ahead in Ohio, deadlocked with Romney in Fla.
• GOP's chances at Senate imperiled by self-inflicted wounds

Both Obama and Romney spent the day criss-crossing the United States to make a firmly centrist appeal, each of them trying to sound upbeat as the clock counts down on Election 2012. Each candidate drew thousands — sometimes tens of thousands — of supporters to rallies in Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio and beyond. And each candidate argued he was the one who could break through the gridlock in a Congress beset for the past two years by bitter partisan fights.

"You know that if the president is re-elected, he'll still be unable to work with the people in Congress," Romney told a sprawling crowd in Colorado. "He's ignored them. He's blamed them. He's attacked them."

Romney spent much of the campaign's final weekend arguing he was the candidate of "change," co-opting Obama's 2008 message to use four years later against the president. 

Whether the Republican candidate's claim to to the mantle of change would resonate with a handful of remaining swing voters in just a few battleground states was unclear. Obama seemed to enjoy an edge in states like Iowa, leading Romney by five points among likely voters, according to the Des Moines Register's final poll. But a WMUR poll of New Hampshire also found the president and Romney tied, at 47 percent, in another battleground state: New Hampshire. 

That neither Obama or Romney had managed to open a solid advantage over the other in the final hours of the campaign only raised the stakes for the final series of events on Sunday and Monday. Both Obama and Romney — along with Vice President Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan — were set to hit the road for another robust schedule tomorrow. Obama was set to travel to Colorado, Florida, and New Hampshire; Romney's schedule would take him to Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Pushing back hard at a new ad by political opponents, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton accused the Mitt Romney campaign Monday of saying "absolutely anything to win" and engaging in an attack on President Obama's auto industry record that is "the biggest load of bull in the world."

Related: Jeep ad caps Romney effort to recast opposition to auto bailout

The tough rhetoric comes after the Romney campaign launched an ad in Ohio claiming that ""Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China."

Speaking to over 4,000 supporters in Youngstown, Clinton flatly decried that as "bull."

"It turns out, Jeep is reopening in China because they've made so much money here, they can afford to do it and they are going on with their plans here," he said. "They put out a statement today saying it was the biggest load of bull in the world that they would ever consider shutting down their American operations. They are roaring in America, thanks to people like the people of Ohio."

Biden, whose stump speech was even more littered with folksy appeals than usual as he shared the stage with Clinton, accused Romney of "pirouettes more than a ballerina" on his auto industry stances and called the ad "an absolutely patently false assertion."

"Ladies and gentlemen, have they no shame!?" he added. "I mean, what? Romney will say anything, absolutely anything to win, it seems."

Obama's record on the auto industry bailout is largely credited for buoying his poll numbers in swing state Ohio, a firewall Romney is eager to burn through.

Biden on Monday also accused Romney of proposing to "liquidate" the auto industry, a claim that the GOP nominee vigorously contests.

“Today, Vice President Biden falsely claimed that Mitt Romney wanted to ‘liquidate’ the auto industry, and was dishonest about the administration’s own record," said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. "Mitt Romney’s support for loan guarantees and warranties for the U.S. auto industry is clear. The Obama campaign is less concerned with engaging in a meaningful conversation about his failed policies and more concerned with arguing against facts about their record they dislike." 

As Ohio has become almost a must-win state for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, he has sought to blur distinctions between himself and President Barack Obama on the issue of the 2009 auto bailouts. 

A new TV ad playing to erroneous fears that Jeep might move its manufacturing from Ohio to China caps a prolonged effort by Romney to recast his opposition to Obama's actions to prop up an industry that employs one in eight of Ohio's voters. 

Romney has sought to reframe his criticism of Obama's handling of the 2009 rescue of General Motors and Chrysler in an effort to combat the president's usage of the bailout to court swing voters in the Buckeye State. The GOP nominee has argued it was Obama who took the companies bankrupt, and has argued that he would be a better president for beleaguered autoworkers.

And a new television ad airing in Toledo and Youngstown, Ohio, the Romney campaign raises the specter of production of Jeeps moving from the U.S. to China, an assertion which Jeep's Italian parent company has said is blatantly false.

Related: Ohio governor says Romney will carry Buckeye State

The GOP candidate's new tack represents an effort to play offense on the issue of auto bailouts in the final eight days of the campaign. Obama has used Romney's opposition to the 2008-09 rescue to great effect in Ohio and other Midwestern states, where the former Massachusetts governor must perform well if he's to have any hope of being elected president.

"You saw in the debates that Barack Obama said a few things that were, as he said, whoppers," Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said at a Romney rally on Monday in Cleveland. "He turned to Mitt Romney and said, 'You wanted to take those companies through bankruptcy and not provide them any federal aid.' Let me tell you, I supported a rescue package for the autos, but what Barack Obama said was simply not true. And by the way, it was Barack Obama who took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy."

Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich, also suggested Sunday on "Meet the Press" that the bailout hadn't been as great as Obama might suggest.

"We are thrilled that we have a strong auto industry," he argued, "but it doesn't account for the growth of 112,000 jobs in our state."

But it was the Jeep ad in particular that marked the culmination of an effort by Romney over the past 18 months to reframe the auto debate on friendlier terms.

"Obama took GM and Chrylser into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China," the narrator of the ad says as a clip of a disputed Bloomberg News report appears onscreen, saying Chrysler "plans to return Jeep output to China."

The original Bloomberg report became fodder for conservatives, including Romney, who said  last week in Ohio that Jeep "is thinking of moving all production to China." But Jeep's ownership has said it isn't planning to move any U.S. production to China; rather, the automaker is establishing new capacity in China to build vehicles that will be sold in China.

But the ad plays to those ill-founded fears. A fair viewing of the ad might leave that impression with a voter, though the language in the ad is so narrowly tailored that it can't be directly disputed.

That could make a difference in a battleground territory like northwest Ohio, the home to a major Jeep plant that employs thousands of Toledoans and almost left the area in the late 1990s until the city stepped forward to offer hundreds of millions in tax credits.

The Obama campaign responded with a TV ad of its own, accusing the GOP nominee of being "wrong then" and "dishonest now."

"It reeks of desperation, because that's what it is," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said Monday on a conference call.

But the Jeep ad is just one component of Romney's months-long effort to better couch his opposition to the bailout.

FIRST READ: Romney's chances in Ohio tied to softening bailout stance

Romney, whose father was an auto executive before becoming governor of Michigan, penned an op-ed shortly after the 2008 election, infamously titled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." The piece for the New York Times opposed the loans for the companies that then-outgoing President George W. Bush and some Republicans (including Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who would become Romney's vice presidential nominee) had favored, calling instead for a managed bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler with government support for the companies' warranties and for post-bankruptcy financing offered by private lenders.

Obama eventually embarked upon a different course. His administration negotiated a managed bankruptcy with bondholders, autoworkers' unions and the companies' leadership, while occasionally injecting the companies with capital drawn from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in order to stave off a more drastic bankruptcy, and possible liquidation.

Democrats contend that no private financing was available to the auto companies during the bailout, and the government was the only actor equipped to provide the companies with a lifeline while simultaneously negotiating their bankruptcy, from which GM and Chrysler immediately emerged.

The bailout was unpopular at the time, derided by Republicans as a favor for unions, since autoworkers' pensions — in conservatives' view — were favored over dealers and other secured bondholders. Indeed, the Indiana State Police Pension Fund sued to prevent the deal from going forward, but it was rejected by the Supreme Court.

RELATED: Auto politics haunt Romney in NW Ohio

GM and Chrysler both rebounded in the months following the bailout to improve sales and profits, allowing the companies to pay off their loans from the government more quickly than expected. Their success has been heralded ever since by Democrats as a gutsy and successful example of Obama's leadership at the height of the Great Recession.

And since that time, Romney has — at alternating moments — both embraced and rejected central elements of Obama's decision making.

The Republican nominee has argued that it was his original idea, rather than Obama's, to put the auto companies through bankruptcy, though Romney's proposed process would have differed immensely. (Romney's plan wouldn't have necessarily forced GM and Chrysler into liquidation, nor was that what the governor had advocated — contrary to the president's suggestion during this month's debate.)

Romney was most pointedly forced to confront his opposition to the bailout during the Michigan and Ohio primaries in late February and early March. The Michigan native repeatedly called himself a "car guy" while campaigning near the Motor City, and appeared driving a Chrysler in a TV ad.

And Romney took to the editorial page of the Detroit News, where he accused Obama of "crony capitalism" in the bailout and said the companies would have been better off without Obama's intervention.

"Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them," Romney wrote.

FLASHBACK: How much support would Romney have given to automakers?

As with a number of other issues since the primary, Romney, the Republican standard-bearer, has tried to soften the edges of some of his harder-charging rhetoric during the primaries.

"I’m a son of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. My dad was head of a car company. I like American cars. And I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry. My plan to get the industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks," Romney said at the third and final debate a week ago against Obama.

The GOP nominee's claim prompted the president to accuse Romney of trying to "airbrush history."

Speaking Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, former President Bill Clinton got in on the action. He said Chrysler "put out a statement sayin' it was the biggest load of bull in the world" in reference of the Jeep-to-China rumors. 

"He ties himself in more knots than a Boy Scout does in a knot-tying contest," Clinton said of Romney.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

PARMA, Ohio -- Two rock stars -- one a former Democratic president, the other a multi-platinum musician -- made an appeal for President Barack Obama to voters in battleground territory in northeast Ohio on Thursday.

Former President Bill Clinton joined forces with Bruce Springsteen for a high-profile appearance on Obama's behalf in the Cleveland area, a key region in a key battleground state that could make-or-break the president's bid for a second term.

"I've had, I don't know, 20-something jobs before I got elected president. But this is the first time in my life I ever got to be the warm-up act for Bruce Springsteen. I am qualified because I was born in the USA; and unlike one of the candidates for president, I keep all of my money here," Clinton told told the more than 3,000 packed into the gym at Cuyahoga Community College.

An additional 700 crammed into over-flow rooms.

The rally was Springsteen's first stop on the campaign trail this year, but just the latest for Clinton, who's emerged as one of Obama's top advocates, first at September's Democratic National Convention and later at campaign stops throughout the country. Clinton has been to Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada, and will travel tomorrow to Wisconsin.

Springsteen was set to travel to Iowa for a solo rally later in the afternoon.

Both Clinton and Springsteen played up Ohio's Midwestern tradition and the auto industry rescue initiated by Obama in 2009 in their speeches, mindful of the jobs preserved by the bailout of GM and Chrysler. ("I'm thankful GM is still making cars," Springsteen joked. "What else would I write about? I'd have no job!")

During his warm up act, which exceeded 30 minutes, Clinton blasted Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for a lack of transparency, telling supporters they did not put up with the "hide and seek stuff" of the GOP candidate.  His budget, tax returns and details about his economic plan are things the former president said the Republican has been hiding.

"I love Ohio, it's an old school place," Clinton said. "We like our families, we like our communities, we value personal loyalty. When you were down, you were out and when your whole economy was threatened, the president had your back. You gotta have his back now."

At one point, in making the case against Romney, Clinton acknowledged that the economy was "not fixed," a comment on which the Republican nominee's campaign quickly pounced.

"We agree with former President Bill Clinton. The economy has not been fixed under President Barack Obama," said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. "Today, more than 23 million Americans are struggling for work, poverty has increased and food stamps are at record levels. Mitt Romney believes we can do better by creating 12 million new jobs with higher take-home pay, cutting spending to put our nation on course for a balanced budget, and actually fixing our economy."

For his part, Springsteen has a well-established track record of supporting Democrats, and he posted a letter on his website Wednesday evening formally backing Obama.

"This presidential election is different than the last one because President Obama has a four year record to run on. Last time around, he carried with him a tremendous amount of hope and expectations" he wrote. "Unfortunately, due to the economic chaos the previous administration left him with, and the extraordinary intensity of the opposition, it turned into a really rough ride. But through grit, determination, and focus, the President has been able to do a great many things that many of us deeply support."

In front of the crowd today, Springsteen said, "The future is rarely a tide rushing in. It's a long march, day by day. And Obama feels that in his bones for all 100 percent of us."

In a short acoustic set, Springsteen played some of his more recognizeable hits -- including his steel town dirge, "Youngstown," for the city just a short distance from Thursday's rally -- along with a jokingly-composed campaign song The Boss said he wrote at the president's request.

"Let's vote for the man who got Osama," went one line. Continuing about the second debate: "Smilin' Joe really brought the drama."

INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- After Thursday night's vice presidential debate, former President Bill Clinton said he now sympathizes with Paul Ryan, the man he said had the "brass" to criticize President Barack Obama's Medicare savings in health care reform.

Stumping here for the Indiana Democratic party on Friday, Clinton said Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan "let the cat out of the bag" when he squared off against Joe Biden in Kentucky last night.

"You know, I kind of sympathize with Congressman Ryan, he has to defend now Gov. Romney's position that the $716 billion in Medicare savings in the president's budget -- that the congressman voted for -- is somehow a ripoff even though it was in his budget too."

Fact checkers have debunked GOP claims that Obama cut $716 billion from Medicare, and on the stump Clinton has vigorously attempted to defend Democrats record on the hot button issue, most notable at the Democratic National Convention, when he satirically quipped that Ryan had "brass" for critiquing cuts so similar to ones proposed in the budget he authored.

Romney campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg countered that "[Obama] has done nothing to reform Medicare for the long haul and prevent it from going bankrupt. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a plan that protects Medicare for current seniors and preserves and strengthens it for future retirees."

Related: Biden plays aggressor in debate as Ryan argues GOP case

But it was more than just Ryan's stance on Medicare that stood to Clinton during last night's debate.  He used his stop in Indiana, where the auto industry plays an important role, to take a jab at Ryan's answer to a debate question about Romney's opposition to the auto bailout.

"When Mr. Ryan said last night that Gov. Romney was a car guy, I thought 'Well if having an elevator to stack them counts, I guess he was,' Clinton said. "Let me tell you something about this car thing, it was not a bailout, it was a restructuring that we as taxpayers participated in because the banks were unwilling to save the automobile companies."

The high profile Democratic surrogate was here for the "Hoosier Common Sense" rally for Indiana Democratic senate candidate Joe Donnelly and gubernatorial candidate John Gregg. Both races have garnered plenty of national attention and give the Hoosier State a rare chance to elect both a Democratic senator and governor in the same year.

Clinton, who stressed the need for bipartisanship in Washington, sought to paint Donnelly's opponent, Republican Richard Mourdock, as an extremist unwilling to work across the aisle.  It's a position Mourdock himself has seemed to at times endorse, like in May when he told NBC's Chuck Todd that "bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view." The Republican senate candidate unseated 36-year incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in a primary where one of his main attack lines dealt was Lugar's history of bipartisanship.

Related: Ryan wades deep into lengthy Afghanistan argument

"I was raised to believe that nobody's right all the time. Now, maybe Mr. Mourdock is, I don't know. He's way right all the time, I know that," Clinton said to loud applause at North Central High School.

Clinton painted Rep. Mike Pence, campaigning against Gregg for governor, as an equally partisan politician largely void of a record of accomplishment. "It would be like a cold shower for Congressman Pence if he were to become governor, because in the statehouse, you don't have an option of arithmetic rules. And you can't not pass bills. you can't get re-elected like you can to Congress, apparently you can get re-elected for a dozen years and never pass a bill," said Clinton.

Also joining Clinton on stage in the Hoosier State was was former Sen. Even Bayh. Clinton told the crowd that all four men were more fiscally conservative than both Romney and Ryan "because, as I said in Charlotte, we believe in arithmetic."

The former president has had a packed schedule campaigning both for Obama and Democratic congressional candidates around the country. From Indiana, Clinton headed to Iowa to help raise funds for Democrats in the Hawkeye State.

"I didn't expect to be quite so involved in this campaign. I have now a daughter who's working for  television network and a wife who's got one of only two jobs in the government, the other being secretary of defense, that are prohibited from participating in electoral politics, so you're stuck with me," Clinton said.

DURHAM, NH -- Former President Bill Clinton is now citing Mitt Romney's infamous comments about the "47 percent" as proof that the GOP doesn't practice what it preaches.

The former president, who has established himself as one of the chief spokesman for President Barack Obama's campaign, pounced on Romney's surreptitiously-recorded comments while stumping Wednesday in New Hampshire.

Clinton went after Romney for the video, in which the Republican presidential hopeful said nearly half the country wouldn't vote for him because they pay no income taxes and are "dependent" on government.

"A guy with a tax account in Cayman Islands is attacking other people for not wanting to [pay taxes]. I mean, you gotta give him credit, like I said, that's like Congressman Ryan attacking Barack Obama for having the same Medicare savings he did.  When you really bust somebody for doing what you did, it take a lot of gall, you know?" Clinton said to applause.

Recommended: Obama leads Romney by 50 points with Latinos

The former president added: "Until this tea party faction took over the Republican Party and strangled it so much that the oxygen stopped running to the brain...until that happened, we had broad bipartisan support for the things that took 61 percent of that 47 percent out from under the income tax because they honored work and family."

Though Clinton made no mention of tonight's debate, he aggressively attacked Republicans and their nominee for being a party of extremists. He said Americans will make a choice in November over whether they want to "celebrate our diversity or to drive a stake through the heart of it."

Recommended: GOP-ers say Romney shouldn't run government like a business 

The former president also highlighted the parties differences in health care reform, an issue that is expected to be a contentious topic in the Denver debate. Clinton gave minor credit to Romney for passing health care reform as governor of Massachusetts, which he said lowered slightly costs in the Bay State. Clinton said of Romney's attempts to distance himself from the law: "He has renounced the only part of his record that has really worked, that he could be advocating in this election.

Nearly 1,700 gathered to hear the 42nd president, many of them young people.  Clinton tailored his message around to the college-aged crowd, telling students that Republicans will make it more difficult to pay for higher education. He began his speech telling supporters in the swing state that they have a right to vote where they attend school.

"I had six jobs going through law school. Six. I don't need a lecture from them on personal responsibility. But I had a loan too," he said.

Since his high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, Clinton has established himself as one of the president's top surrogates, visiting swing states like Florida and now the Granite State. Today, as both Obama and Romney broke from the campaign trail to prepare for the presidential debate, Clinton rallied for the incumbent and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio represented Republicans at an event in Nevada.

Jordan Frasier contributed