Edwards decries Hillary's 'double-speak'
Posted: Friday, November 02, 2007 1:39 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Tricia Miller Cheraw, SC -- Campaigning here this morning,
Edwards decried “the politics of double-speak” he said was displayed in Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia.
“Now I have a really simple rule,” he said. “When you get asked a yes-or-no question, you can’t answer it yes-and-no. That doesn’t work, and we saw some of that the other night.”
“What I heard was Sen. Clinton saying she wanted to be for change, but defending a broken system in Washington,” he continued. “Saying that she wanted to end the war, but she would keep combat troops in Iraq who would continue combat missions in Iraq. Saying that she would stand up to George Bush on the issue of going to war in Iran, but voting for a resolution in the Senate that enabled George Bush to do exactly what he wanted to do. Saying that she didn’t want to change anything about Social Security in public, but then in private saying she might be for raising the cap on the Social Security tax. See, my view is, we need to say the same thing all the time.”
The Edwards campaign released a video -- entitled the "Politics of Parsing" -- hitting Clinton on the same point.
In a media availability following the event, Edwards downplayed any implication that Clinton should be treated differently because she’s a woman. He was surprised to hear about the exclusion of Stephen Colbert from the South Carolina Democratic primary in an interview with CNN following the availability, adding with a laugh that he “kind of liked” the extra attention Colbert had brought to the race.
