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IT GIRL TO SNIT GIRL

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa – Surging in a new poll, Hillary Rodham Clinton urged small-town Iowa voters not to prejudge her based on what others say – then demonstrated her sharper side by eviscerating a tough questioner in a testy exchange.

In a rare departure from her tightly scripted remarks, the former first lady lashed out at an audience member steamed at her Senate vote to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Randall Rolph, of Nashua, Iowa, compared the vote to the one Clinton cast for the Iraq war resolution, asking, “Why should I support your candidacy . . . if it appears you haven’t learned from your past mistakes?”

Clinton hit back hard, saying, “The premise of the question is wrong, and I’ll be happy to explain that to you.”

Then she suggested Rolph was a plant, saying his question was based on something “somebody obviously sent you.”

She soon backed down, telling him, “I apologize. It’s just that I’ve been asked the very same question in three other places.”

She later offered to put Rolph in touch with her staff and explained that her Iran position was meant to encourage sanctions and diplomacy.

Earlier, Clinton had asked that the crowd at the local community center give her “a fair reading as who I am, not what somebody says I am.”

Clinton spent the day barnstorming across Iowa’s rural hamlets, courting the elderly voters who tend to pack the caucuses here.

Still, Rolph, who says he is an undecided Democratic voter, was annoyed. “It really offended me with her response that those words are not my own,” he said.

Clinton’s full-throttled reply comes as she is ramping up her TV ads touting her health plan and softening her image.

The timing of Clinton’s four-day push here couldn’t be better. A Des Moines Register poll shows her finally pulling ahead of Barack Obama and John Edwards in the only state where she didn’t lead.

Clinton was backed by 29 percent of likely caucusgoers in the poll, with Edwards at 23 percent and Obama at 22 percent

But Clinton said she isn’t complacent. “I pay absolutely no attention to what any poll says, what any pundit on TV says. I have absolutely no interest in that,” she said, “Nobody has come to caucus yet. Nobody has cast a vote yet.”

When another questioner asked about treating chronic diseases, Clinton warned about bad eating habits, compared to the three square meals she ate as a child.

“People are in their cars eating; people eat at their desks,” she said, which can lead to such diseases as diabetes, “I’m as guilty as everybody.”

Most voters who came out liked what they saw.

“I think she’s doing well coming here,” said Rosalie Richardson, a retired nurse from Fredericksburg. “She listens. I think she comes across pretty good and she speaks her mind.”

geoff.earle@nypost.com