Oh-eight (D): Hillary's anti-war support
Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:07 AM by Mark Murray
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Democrats
BIDEN: NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann reports that Biden today will pick up the endorsement of Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Per the campaign, McCarthy's support for Biden is based on the senator's foreign policy background and his plan for a measured withdrawal from Iraq. McCarthy's nod will be Biden's eighth endorsement out of the state legislature in Iowa.
CLINTON: The new Los Angles Times/Bloomberg polls in the early states finds voters who are the most anti-war are siding with Clinton. "Many of those voters who want an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops support her candidacy and consider her best able to end the war, as do many who back a more gradual drawdown… The findings help explain why the New York senator has built a strong lead over Democratic rivals who have made their opposition to the war the centerpiece of their campaigns -- and who have laid out more-detailed plans for quicker troop reductions."
Clinton made her first public comments about Hsu since the campaign decided to return nearly a $1 million in contributions Hsu raised. “‘I believe that the vast majority of those 200-plus donors are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about what they will or won't do going forward,’ Clinton said in a conference call with reporters -- her first public comments on the fallout of Hsu's arrest and her decision to return the $850,000 he collected for her presidential bid.
The Clinton campaign has told First Read that they will NOT "re-solicit" the Hsu donors. But as Clinton said, if these folks make up their own mind and decide to donate, that's up to the donors. In fact, here is the New York Daily News: “Clinton opened the door yesterday to letting the donors rounded up by Hsu write new checks -- if they swear the money is their own and didn't come from her disgraced ‘HillRaiser.’”
And as if the Hsu story wasn't weird enough, now we learn he attempted suicide on that Amtrak train. The suicide notes hit mailboxes this week.
Giuliani’s former mayoral campaign manager and deputy mayor during his first term is supporting Clinton for president. "I'm not voting for Rudy. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton. I'm an 'ambassador' for Hillary," Fran Reiter told the New York Post. She “complained [Giuliani] has fundamentally shifted his positions on key social issues like abortion and gun control and called his health-care plan ‘appalling.’” The Giuliani camp responded: "We'll trade Fran Reiter for Louis Freeh any time.”
DODD: On his Web site yesterday, Dodd jumped on Petraeus’ assessment of whether the US is safer with fighting in Iraq. "It's a tragedy that the question of whether or not our strategy of escalating the presence of US forces in Iraq's civil war will make us safer was not asked before we put it into action," Dodd's statement said. "As a result we've seen the bloodiest summer since we've been in Iraq and no noticeable political progress."
EDWARDS: To rebut Bush’s Iraq speech tonight, “Edwards has bought two minutes of air time on MSNBC,” the AP reports. “The ad was taped at Edwards' home in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the style of an Oval Office address, with him sitting at a desk and speaking straight to the camera, with American flag in the background.” In the ad, Edwards says: "Tell Congress you know the truth. They have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice -- a firm timeline for withdrawal." The ad likely will cost between $100,000 and $150,000.
OBAMA: The New York Times calls Obama's Iraq speech yesterday his "most extensive plan yet for winding down the war in Iraq, proposing to withdraw all combat brigades by the end of next year while leaving behind an unspecified smaller force to strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests… Mr. Obama delivered his remarks in an address at Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa. While he did not directly mention Mrs. Clinton by name, the words in his speech and the name of the city in which he chose to give his speech made his point clear."
Newsweek also sees Obama's Iraq speech as a "fresh" attempt to contrast himself with Clinton. "Obama’s aides believe her vote for the war offers a possible chink in the formidable Clinton armor. They eagerly point out that she failed to read the full and classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Unlike the public version of that report, the full NIE included multiple caveats and disclaimers that cast doubt on key assertions by the White House.
On his Iraq speech, the Des Moines Register highlights Obama’s proposed “$2 billion a year in aid to Iraqi refugees and welcoming at least 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the United States as part of his strategy to bring peace and end the war.”
NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan interviews Zbigniew Brzezinski, who introduced Obama in Iowa yesterday. When asked why a freshman senator from Illinois who has had no real foreign policy experience could be qualified to take on the challenges of a new world order, Brzezinski said that Obama grasps the history of this moment. "The real test for qualifications is not some extensive record of travel or bureaucratic service, it's the ability to understand what is the nature of the historical movement," he said. "Why was Truman qualified? He was a haberdasher. Look at some recent leaders. Look at President Clinton what were his qualifications?"
RICHARDSON: The Politico discovered a major donor with ties to Saddam Hussein in Bill Richardson's FEC report. “Richardson and a host of congressional candidates from both parties accepted cash from Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. and his wife, Lynn, since the federal government accused the Texas oilman of paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein.”
