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‘TERROR’ STRIKE AGAINST HILLARY

Barack Obama used Bill Clinton against Hillary Rodham Clinton last night, blunting criticism over his own relationship with an unrepentant one-time1960s terrorist by pointing to pardons the former president gave to similar figures.

The sharp exchange over onetime Weather Underground member William Ayers came after Obama was asked by ABC News debate moderator George Stephanopoulos to explain his association with Ayers, whose radical group planned bombings at sites including the Pentagon – and who has since said he doesn’t “regret” it.

Ayers lives in Obama’s neighborhood and hosted a meeting the candidate attended in 1995, when he was running for state Senate. Ayers was never prosecuted and is now a University of Illinois professor.

When Clinton pointed out that Obama served on a foundation board with Ayers and said Republicans would use it against him, Obama replied, “President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than mine . . . I can take a punch – I’ve taken some pretty good ones from Senator Clinton.”

Obama was referring to Susan Rosenberg and her partner in crime, Linda Sue Evans, who were linked to suspects in a 1981 Brinks robbery in Nanuet in which two cops and a guard were killed. Rosenberg was ultimately imprisoned for possession of explosives, while Evans had been sentenced for her role in a planned bombing at the Capitol in 1983. Bill Clinton commuted their sentences in a wave of more than 100 pardons granted at the end of his presidency.

Obama insisted Ayers is merely someone he “knows” who has not endorsed him, adding, “The notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense.”

He noted he’s also friends with conservative GOP Sen. Tom Coburn and asked rhetorically if he needs “to apologize” for some of his colleague’s controversial comments. It was the 21st debate the Democrats have held in the 15-month primary season, and it was the toughest questioning Obama has faced.

But Clinton needed a knockout to shake up the increasingly close race before the Pennsylvania primary vote on Tuesday

Early on, Clinton rapped Obama for his controversial remarks that “bitter” working-class people “cling to guns or religion.”

“I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of religion and faith in times that are good and times that are bad,” she said.

Obama said he could see why people “would be taken aback and offended,” but insisted he was making a larger point. And he noted Clinton herself was attacked as out of touch in 1992, when she seemed to deride stay-at-home moms by saying she could have stayed home “and baked cookies.”

At the outset, Clinton – whose campaign is arguing that she’d be more electable – dodged a question about whether Obama could win the general election before finally saying he could.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said – but added she thought she’d do better.

Clinton also gave a mea culpa for wrongly claiming she’d landed in Bosnia under sniper fire as first lady, saying, “I’m embarrassed by it. I have apologized for it. I said it was a mistake.”

On the economy, Obama said he favored raising payroll taxes on people making higher incomes. He has generally been supportive of a tax on those earning $200,000 or more in addition to what they pay on their first $102,000 in earnings. Clinton said she didn’t like that idea, but Obama interjected and said Clinton had said she was open to it earlier in the campaign.

Another question was over Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said the United States brought the 9/11 attacks on itself and “God damn America.” Obama said he’d disavowed the comments, and insisted it was hardly the only issue the GOP would use against a Democrat in a general election.

Meanwhile, just two hours before the debate, Obama’s campaign released his 2007 tax returns, showing that he and his wife, Michelle, raked in $4.2 million, with most of the cash coming from steep sales of his two memoirs.

maggie.haberman@nypost.com