Clinton Launches New Attack on Obama’s Record
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa _ Hillary Rodham Clinton slammed Barack Obama Monday for dodging key abortion, gun and Iran votes _ as a USA Today/Gallup poll showed her national support slipping significantly.
On a three-city swing through northern and western Iowa, the former first lady launched a new attack on Obama’s legislative record starting with his days as an Illinois state senator in the 1990s.
As she campaigned, USA Today reported that Clinton’s support nationally _ which has been impervious to Obama’s attacks _ dropped from 48 to 39 percent in the past two weeks. But she still has a strong lead over him.
On Sunday, she ridiculed Obama’s political courage and personal character. A day later, she hammered away at his experience using her harshest language to date.
“You decide which makes more sense: entrusting our country to someone who is ready on day one … or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience who started running for president when he arrived in the United States Senate,” she said during an appearance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, the hall where Buddy Holly played his last gig in 1959.
“How did running for president become a qualification for being president?” she said to applause.
Not everyone approved.
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former labor secretary and a classmate of both at Yale Law School, said Clinton’s attacks are both inaccurate and counterproductive.
“I just don’t get it,” Reich wrote on his blog. “If there’s anyone in the race whose history shows unique courage and character, it’s Barack Obama. HRC’s campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold positions.”
In a sign of how serious she is about winning the Hawkeye State, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle will relocate from the campaign’s Virginia headquarters to Iowa until the Jan. 3 caucus.
In Cold Lake Monday, Clinton raked Obama for failing to vote yes or no on votes in the Illinois state senate.
“For legislators who don’t want to take a stand there’s a third way to take a vote _ not yes, not no _ but present,” she said. “Seven of those votes were on a woman’s rights to choose … one of which was a measure about firing guns on or near school grounds.”
Obama’s staff maintained that voting “present” wasn’t a dodge, but a longtime method for Illinois state senators to signal their willingness to compromise on specific bills.
“Barack Obama doesn’t need lectures in political courage from someone who followed George Bush to war in Iraq,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton on a day when his campaign created a Web site to track Clinton’s attacks on Obama.
Clinton also lambasted Obama for skipping a vote earlier this year to declare Iran’s Republican Guard a terrorist group. At the time his staff cited a scheduling conflict. The New York senator voted for the measure, which Obama now says might be used as a pretext for invasion.
___
(c) 2007, Newsday.
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
_____
ARCHIVE PHOTOS on MCT Direct (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Clinton, Obama
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.