CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Hillary Rodham Clinton unleashed a blistering attack on Barack Obama‘s courage and character yesterday, accusing him of obscuring his position on health care and wielding a campaign “slush fund.”
Asked if the problem with Obama was a character issue, Clinton responded, “I’m going to let voters make that decision, but it’s beginning to look a lot like that.
“I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks,” Clinton said. “Well, now the fun part starts. We’re into the last month and we’re going to start drawing the contrasts.”
Clinton then whacked Obama for using his leadership PAC to sprinkle more than $100,000 in campaign contributions to influential lawmakers in states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
She charged he “at least skirted, if not violated, the [Federal Election Commission] rules and used lobbyist and PAC money to do so.”
Clinton also ripped Obama for failing to come out for a health plan that covers all Americans, hitting him for calling his plan “universal” in one campaign forum yesterday but then shying away when she was nearby.
“It went from universal when I wasn’t there to comprehensive when I was on the same stage,” she said.
“It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to face up to the very position he took, because every time he changes his posture on it, he uses different words to describe it.
“At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, who’s really committed here?” she said. “Who’s doing it just for political reasons, and who has a lifetime of conviction and commitment?”
The attacks, some of the most pointed and personal of the campaign, come as Obama surged past Clinton in a new Des Moines Register poll just a month before the Iowa caucuses.
Obama said yesterday, “Everything that we’ve done is in exact accordance with the law.”
He shot back at Clinton’s attacks, saying “other campaigns are reading the polls and starting to get stressed and issuing a whole range of outlandish accusations.”
Team Clinton even condemned Obama for his line that, unlike some candidates, he hasn’t been plotting for years to take the presidency, pointing to Obama’s kindergarten essay, “I Want to Become President.”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton shot back, “I’m sure they’ll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second-grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut.”