Clinton steps up attack on Obama
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – With a new poll showing her losing ground in the Iowa caucus race, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., mounted a new, more aggressive attack against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., on Sunday, raising direct questions about his character, challenging his integrity and forecasting a sharp debate over those subjects in the days ahead.
Clinton has hammered Obama recently over his health care proposal, arguing that he is misleading voters because it omits millions of people and would not lower costs. But Sunday, in a dramatic shift, she made it clear that her goal is to challenge Obama not just on policy but also on one of his strongest selling points: his reputation for honesty.
“There’s a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re willing to fight for,” Clinton told reporters here. She said voters in Iowa will have a choice “between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who’s walked the walk.”
Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama’s character, she replied: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that.”
The Obama campaign quickly fought back, and the candidate himself called the new effort a sign of desperation. A Des Moines Register poll released Sunday finds Clinton three points behind Obama, within the poll’s margin of error, among likely Democratic caucusgoers.
“I think that folks from some of the other campaigns are reading the polls and starting to get stressed and issuing a whole range of outlandish accusations,” Obama said. His advisers – and some of hers – believe that if Clinton loses the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, her status as the front-runner nationally will evaporate.
On the Republican side, the Register’s poll showed a continuing surge for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee garnered the support of 29 percent of respondents, 17 points better than in the previous poll. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pulled in 24 percent, a drop of five points.
The new Clinton strategy, acknowledged by her senior advisers as an intentional pivot, carries significant risks and could produce a potential backlash. The Register’s poll also found that Clinton was seen by Iowa voters as the most negative of the Democratic contenders.
Obama had the support of 28 percent of respondents, up six points from the last Register poll, in early October. Former Sen. John Edwards, of North Carolina, drew 23 percent. Clinton was in the middle at 25 percent, down four points from early October. The margin of error is 4.4 percentage points.