Posted on 11/14/2007 4:29:05 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - It's a time-honored playbook for presidential front-runners: ignore your opponents' slings and arrows while promoting your own positive vision for the country. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stuck to that text so far, even as her Democratic rivals have begun openly challenging her character and electability.
With just seven weeks to go until the leadoff caucuses in Iowa, where polls indicate a tight contest, the question is how long the New York senator will try to ride above the rough-and-tumble. There already are signs of a shift.
The issue will be put to a test Thursday, when the Democratic candidates meet for a two-hour televised debate in Las Vegas. While campaign aides insist Clinton is preparing for the forum as she has for others, they acknowledge the new, aggressive phase of the campaign might ultimately require more direct engagement.
"Senator Clinton will be able to maintain her position above the fray until and unless it doesn't work," Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said. "If you start to see a number of polls showing the race closing, she may have to engage her opponents more directly."
After months of a mostly cordial contest that left Clinton the undisputed front-runner, her opponents, especially Barack Obama and John Edwards, have pointedly stepped up their criticism in recent weeks. That, in turn, has forced a change in Clinton's strategy of mostly ignoring her rivals while taking her fight directly to President Bush and the GOP.
"I'm not interested in attacking my opponents, I'm interested in tackling the problems of America," she said last weekend at a Democratic dinner in Iowa. "We should be turning up the heat on the Republicans — they deserve all the heat we can give them."
Clinton strategists acknowledge there might come a time where she needs to take on other Democrats more directly. In fact, there have been indications of a change.
The campaign has created a new Web site, facts.hillaryhub.com, to rebut charges and claims made by Clinton's opponents. After Edwards released a new TV ad saying he would deny health insurance to his Cabinet and members of Congress if they failed to pass universal health care by July 2009, the Clinton campaign posted a note on the site calling his proposal unconstitutional.
Wednesday, Edwards sharply rebutted the campaign's effort to discredit his idea.
"Senator Clinton's campaign has started saying, 'Well, wait a minute, he can't do this.' So instead of talking about what we need to do to bring health care to every American, they're talking about how to protect health care for politicians," Edwards said in Iowa.
The Clinton Web site also took Obama to task for not releasing records from his years as an Illinois state senator, even as he's repeatedly criticized Clinton for the Clinton Library's slow release of records from her years as first lady.
Recently, Clinton has deployed an array of surrogates to defend her — the most prominent being her husband, the former president. This weeks, he told a South Carolina audience that his wife could handle criticism from her rivals even though "those boys have been getting tough on her lately."
Aides said the former president's choice of words was part of his Southern vernacular and that he wasn't making a point about gender.
Earlier, the former president compared attacks on his wife to the "Swift Boat" tactics that helped doom the candidacy of John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee.
The Clinton team is also using her rivals' criticism as a way to appeal for donations. Campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle sent an e-mail message to supporters Tuesday, asking for their help in raising $1 million before Thursday's debate.
"The campaign has changed," Solis Doyle wrote. "You've probably noticed the shift. Our opponents are on the attack. But while they're attacking Hillary, she's attacking the problems facing America."
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said the former first lady can show her toughness without resorting to assaults on her rivals.
"Clinton needs to deliver one solid retort to an attack on her character," Brazile said. "She must make her Democratic opponents look desperate and the GOP as out of the mainstream and in tatters. Honestly, she has every chance to look presidential without coming across as the prize fighter she needs to become."
Democratic Presidential candidate and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, smile to supporters in Clear Lake, Iowa, July 4, 2007. Hillary Clinton on Friday defended her husband for defending her on the campaign trail in Iowa. (Joshua Lott/Reuters)
It's OK, Honeybunch! We'll get thru this somehow.
Workers spread dirt onto the roof of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., Monday, Nov. 12, 2007, to transform what had been a plain looking roof into a virtual garden surrounding Bill Clinton's penthouse apartment. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
I'd be avoiding that place lest one seek to become a Clinton 'plant' ...
Former President Bill Clinton poses for photographs with, from left to right, Donna Washington, her son Braelyn Mitchell and his father Calvin Mitchell as Wakesha Evans and Maryann Manigault look over their photos they took with their cell phone.
President Clinton who is campaigning for his wife Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a stop at Anjae's Hair Studio and Spa in North Charleston, S.C. after speaking to a crowd at Trident Technical College Monday Nov. 12, 2007. (AP Photo/The Post And Courier, Grace Beahm)
The problems of course being...
(1) the slings and arrows are largely on target; and
(2) WHAT positive agenda?
‘promoting your own positive vision for the country’???
And that would be, bashing and blaming the current administration for everything under the sun? What a positive vision!
When do her minions become sick and tired of her constant blame game and and abysmal lack of any intelligent ideas? I know I am.
...visiting the grandkid?
maybe,, or some distant cousins. ;-)
Of course, they can, Beth, sweety.
Because you folks at AP (and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post) will protect her at every opportunity and won't hold her feet to their fire.
Now, go back to writing articles for the "Modern Living" section...
No.....
She knows she did not honestly win her Senate seat. She knows she has never done an honest thing in her life.
when AP asks a question, the answer’s built in. Hillary turns criticism into currency. she’s annointed.
For Hillary to take the high road, she would be in unchartered territory for a Clinton. She has no experience in humility - it’s not in her record.
As an aside ... that guy in the center, with the blue shirt ... is his face/neck looking awfully blotchy?
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