zrinkill
02-22-2008, 08:53 AM
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton accused presidential rival Barack Obama of political plagiarism, but drew boos from a Democratic debate audience when she ridiculed him as the candidate of “change you can Xerox.”
Obama dismissed the charge out of hand at the debate Thursday night, then turned the jeers to applause when he countered, “What we shouldn’t be spending time doing is tearing each other down. We should be spending time lifting the country up.”
Meanwhile, likely Republican nominee John McCain sought to minimize damage to his campaign and his man-of-character image on Thursday, vigorously denying a newspaper report suggesting an improper relationship with a female lobbyist.
Obama and Clinton’s debate Thursday night in Austin, Texas, was just days ahead of the important March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio — contests that even some of Clinton’s supporters say she must win to sustain her campaign for the White House.
The former first lady has lost 11 straight primaries and caucuses, and trails her rival in convention delegates. Obama has won a pair of big union endorsements in the past two days.
The Democrats disagreed on the proper response to a change in government in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation. Clinton said she would refuse to sit down with incoming President Raul Castro until he implements political and economic reforms. Obama said he would meet “without preconditions,” but added the U.S. agenda for such a session would include human rights in the Communist island nation.
They also sparred frequently about health care, a core issue of the campaign. Clinton said repeatedly that Obama’s plan would leave 15 million Americans uncovered. But he accused the former first lady of mishandling the issue by working in secrecy when her husband was in the White House in the 1990s.
Clinton was combative and complimentary by turns, and reflected on her well-known personal struggles in the debate’s final moments.
“Everyone here knows I’ve lived through some crises and some challenging moments in my life,” she said — a thinly veiled but clear reference to her husband Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment.
Then, offering unprompted praise to her rival, the one-time front-runner said, “No matter what happens in this contest, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama.”
Clinton largely sidestepped a question about so-called superdelegates, party insiders who were not picked in primaries and caucuses and can vote as they choose at the party’s nominating convention in August. She said the issue would sort itself out, and “we’ll have a united Democratic party” for the fall campaign ahead of November elections.
But Obama, who has won more primaries and caucuses, said the contests must “count for something … that the will of the voters … is what ultimately will determine who our next nominee is going to be.”
Clinton went into the debate needing a change in the course of the campaign, and waited patiently for an opening to try to diminish her rival, seated inches away on the stage. “I think you can tell from the first 45 minutes Senator Obama and I have a lot in common,” she said.
Barely pausing for breath, she went on to say there were differences.
First, Clinton said she had seen a supporter of Obama interviewed on television recently who was unable to name a single accomplishment the Illinois senator had on his record.
“Words are important and words matter but actions speak louder than words,” she said.
Obama noted that Clinton lately had been urging voters to turn against him by saying, “let’s get real.”
“And the implication is that the people who’ve been voting for me or are involved in my campaign are somehow delusional,” Obama said.
Clinton also raised Obama’s use in his campaign speeches of words first uttered by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
“If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words,” she said. “…Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”
The debate audience booed. Obama said the entire controversy was evidence of a “silly season” that the public finds dispiriting.
Obama’s strong showing in recent primaries has made him the man to beat in a historic struggle between a black man and a white woman, and even former President Bill Clinton has said his wife must win both Ohio and Texas early next month to preserve her candidacy. New polls show Texas a dead heat, and give Clinton a lead in Ohio, but far smaller than the one she held in recent weeks.
In The Associated Press’ delegate count Thursday, Obama had 1,358.5 to 1,264 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination at this summer’s convention.
The latest count includes Obama’s win announced Thursday in the global primary for expatriates held by Democrats Abroad, which has a unique system for dividing delegates that led to the unusual fractional total.
On the Republican side, McCain on Thursday denied reports in the New York Times and The Washington Post that implied a romantic link with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman and suggested McCain pushed legislation that would have benefited her clients.
The reports come as McCain is close to wrapping up his party’s nomination, without a strong Republican challenger in sight. Even if it is unlikely to derail his nomination, it is an unwelcome distraction.
The allegations contradict core themes of McCain’s campaign: That he would bring honor and integrity to the White House as well as a record of changing business-as-usual Washington ways.
Even the suggestion of marital impropriety — though rejected by both McCain and his wife — could risk further damaging his acrimonious relationship with the social conservatives whose support he desperately needs in the general election campaign against a fired-up Democratic Party.
“It’s not true,” said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and a hero of the Vietnam War. “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust,” he said. He described the lobbyist as a friend.
McCain and his wife, standing together at a news conference in Toledo, Ohio, said they were disappointed that The New York Times ran its page one article, and his campaign referred to a “smear campaign” and “gutter politics” in the midst of the presidential race.
“We think the story speaks for itself,” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a written statement. “On the timing, our policy is we publish stories when they are ready.”
The newspapers said that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman’s clients. The reports said Iseman denied having a romantic relationship with the senator.
McCain has already been focusing his campaign on the November general election. This week he was making campaign stops through Midwestern states likely to be pivotal in the fall.
“I will compete very strongly here in the heartland of America,” the Republican nominee-in-waiting said in Ohio, underscoring the importance of the state and the region in the election. Ohio was the deciding state that gave President George W. Bush the 2004 election.
Mike Huckabee is still running for the Republican nomination, but unlikely to catch up. McCain has 958 delegates to Huckabee’s 254. It takes 1,191 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/02/21/clinton-obama-differ-on-diplomacy-with-post-castro-cuba/
Obama dismissed the charge out of hand at the debate Thursday night, then turned the jeers to applause when he countered, “What we shouldn’t be spending time doing is tearing each other down. We should be spending time lifting the country up.”
Meanwhile, likely Republican nominee John McCain sought to minimize damage to his campaign and his man-of-character image on Thursday, vigorously denying a newspaper report suggesting an improper relationship with a female lobbyist.
Obama and Clinton’s debate Thursday night in Austin, Texas, was just days ahead of the important March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio — contests that even some of Clinton’s supporters say she must win to sustain her campaign for the White House.
The former first lady has lost 11 straight primaries and caucuses, and trails her rival in convention delegates. Obama has won a pair of big union endorsements in the past two days.
The Democrats disagreed on the proper response to a change in government in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation. Clinton said she would refuse to sit down with incoming President Raul Castro until he implements political and economic reforms. Obama said he would meet “without preconditions,” but added the U.S. agenda for such a session would include human rights in the Communist island nation.
They also sparred frequently about health care, a core issue of the campaign. Clinton said repeatedly that Obama’s plan would leave 15 million Americans uncovered. But he accused the former first lady of mishandling the issue by working in secrecy when her husband was in the White House in the 1990s.
Clinton was combative and complimentary by turns, and reflected on her well-known personal struggles in the debate’s final moments.
“Everyone here knows I’ve lived through some crises and some challenging moments in my life,” she said — a thinly veiled but clear reference to her husband Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment.
Then, offering unprompted praise to her rival, the one-time front-runner said, “No matter what happens in this contest, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama.”
Clinton largely sidestepped a question about so-called superdelegates, party insiders who were not picked in primaries and caucuses and can vote as they choose at the party’s nominating convention in August. She said the issue would sort itself out, and “we’ll have a united Democratic party” for the fall campaign ahead of November elections.
But Obama, who has won more primaries and caucuses, said the contests must “count for something … that the will of the voters … is what ultimately will determine who our next nominee is going to be.”
Clinton went into the debate needing a change in the course of the campaign, and waited patiently for an opening to try to diminish her rival, seated inches away on the stage. “I think you can tell from the first 45 minutes Senator Obama and I have a lot in common,” she said.
Barely pausing for breath, she went on to say there were differences.
First, Clinton said she had seen a supporter of Obama interviewed on television recently who was unable to name a single accomplishment the Illinois senator had on his record.
“Words are important and words matter but actions speak louder than words,” she said.
Obama noted that Clinton lately had been urging voters to turn against him by saying, “let’s get real.”
“And the implication is that the people who’ve been voting for me or are involved in my campaign are somehow delusional,” Obama said.
Clinton also raised Obama’s use in his campaign speeches of words first uttered by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
“If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words,” she said. “…Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”
The debate audience booed. Obama said the entire controversy was evidence of a “silly season” that the public finds dispiriting.
Obama’s strong showing in recent primaries has made him the man to beat in a historic struggle between a black man and a white woman, and even former President Bill Clinton has said his wife must win both Ohio and Texas early next month to preserve her candidacy. New polls show Texas a dead heat, and give Clinton a lead in Ohio, but far smaller than the one she held in recent weeks.
In The Associated Press’ delegate count Thursday, Obama had 1,358.5 to 1,264 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination at this summer’s convention.
The latest count includes Obama’s win announced Thursday in the global primary for expatriates held by Democrats Abroad, which has a unique system for dividing delegates that led to the unusual fractional total.
On the Republican side, McCain on Thursday denied reports in the New York Times and The Washington Post that implied a romantic link with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman and suggested McCain pushed legislation that would have benefited her clients.
The reports come as McCain is close to wrapping up his party’s nomination, without a strong Republican challenger in sight. Even if it is unlikely to derail his nomination, it is an unwelcome distraction.
The allegations contradict core themes of McCain’s campaign: That he would bring honor and integrity to the White House as well as a record of changing business-as-usual Washington ways.
Even the suggestion of marital impropriety — though rejected by both McCain and his wife — could risk further damaging his acrimonious relationship with the social conservatives whose support he desperately needs in the general election campaign against a fired-up Democratic Party.
“It’s not true,” said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and a hero of the Vietnam War. “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust,” he said. He described the lobbyist as a friend.
McCain and his wife, standing together at a news conference in Toledo, Ohio, said they were disappointed that The New York Times ran its page one article, and his campaign referred to a “smear campaign” and “gutter politics” in the midst of the presidential race.
“We think the story speaks for itself,” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a written statement. “On the timing, our policy is we publish stories when they are ready.”
The newspapers said that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman’s clients. The reports said Iseman denied having a romantic relationship with the senator.
McCain has already been focusing his campaign on the November general election. This week he was making campaign stops through Midwestern states likely to be pivotal in the fall.
“I will compete very strongly here in the heartland of America,” the Republican nominee-in-waiting said in Ohio, underscoring the importance of the state and the region in the election. Ohio was the deciding state that gave President George W. Bush the 2004 election.
Mike Huckabee is still running for the Republican nomination, but unlikely to catch up. McCain has 958 delegates to Huckabee’s 254. It takes 1,191 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/02/21/clinton-obama-differ-on-diplomacy-with-post-castro-cuba/