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 Clinton Shrugs Off Criticism
by The Associated Press
Posted: November 3, 2007 - 11:00 am ET
(Concord, New Hampshire) Hillary Rodham Clinton
says her status as the Democratic presidential front-runner - not her gender -
has led her male primary rivals to intensify their criticism of her.
"I don't think they're
piling on because I'm a woman. I think they're piling on because I'm
winning," Clinton told reporters after filing paperwork to appear on the
New Hampshire primary ballot.
"I anticipate it's going
to get even hotter, and if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I'm
very much at home in the kitchen," she said.
The New York senator's
comments came three days after a televised debate in which her six male
opponents challenged her character, electability and apparent unwillingness to
answer tough questions.
The Clinton campaign reacted
strongly to what it called "piling on." One fundraising e-mail it sent
out called her "one tough woman" and decried the "six on
one" nature of the debate criticism. Clinton herself referred to the
"all boys club of presidential politics" in a speech at Wellesley
College Thursday.
The complaints haven't
deterred her rivals. On Friday, John Edwards told a campaign audience in South
Carolina that Clinton hasn't been candid with voters.
"Since the debate, we've
continued to hear spin, smoke and mirrors - the same kind of double talk - to
get away from the very serious issues that are in front of us in this
campaign," he said.
And in a television interview,
Barack Obama, who is black, said he doesn't assume that tough questions he's
asked are racially motivated.
"We spent, I think, the
first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues and I
didn't come out and say look I'm being hit on because I look different from the
rest of the folks on the stage," Obama told NBC's "Today" show.
On the day she made her
candidacy official in the leadoff primary state, Clinton was pressed anew on
topics raised in Tuesday's debate.
On the thorny topic of
granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Clinton said she generally
supported efforts by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and others who have tried to
address public safety questions in absence of federal immigration reform.
Last weekend, Spitzer
announced a plan backed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to give
licenses with limited privileges to some undocumented workers.
"I don't know all the
details," Clinton said, adding that the issue was going to be hard to
resolve.
"We've had, now, seven
years of an administration that saw things in black and white, yes and no, up
and down. I think it's time we actually had a conversation with the American
people," she said.
Clinton disputed the notion
that her answers to tough questions were too "nuanced," arguing that
many of the issues facing the next president aren't easily explained in a
televised soundbite.
"I feel very comfortable
about the positions I've taken. I will continue to say what I believe. Sometimes
it won't be as artfully presented as I would wish," she said.
Clinton also reacted
defensively to complaints that she has been less accessible to reporters than
other candidates competing for the presidency.
"We will continue to run
our campaign as we run our campaign," she said.
She spoke outside the office
of New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, who has the sole authority to
set the date for the state's primary.
Gardner has indicated it will
be no later than Jan. 8, rather than the once-planned date of Jan. 22 because
Michigan and Florida have taken steps to move their contests up.
Later, she greeted hundreds of
supporters at a rally in Concord and dropped by a diner in Manchester.
On the other side of the
country, former President Clinton defended his wife on another issue that was
raised in the debate: whether he has tried to block papers from her years as
first lady from being released by the National Archives.
"The whole thing was a
total canard," he told an audience in Seattle, referring to the moment when
debate moderator Tim Russert held up a 1994 letter written by the former
president to the Archives, asking that certain records be withheld.
He said his wife didn't know
at the time that he had written a second letter in 2002 asking the Archives to
release his presidential papers as quickly as possible.
He contended the debate
moderators had played "gotcha" with his wife while tossing softball
questions to her rivals.
©365Gay.com 2007
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