Clinton, Obama Back Off Attacks - Both Camps Try To Play Down Rift [View All]

Source: Washington Post

THE DEMOCRATS
Clinton, Obama Back Off Attacks
Both Camps Try To Play Down Rift



Sen. Barack Obama and his security detail walk under a canopy of Spanish moss in the trees at Beaufort College in South Carolina. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

By Shailagh Murray and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 25, 2008; Page A08

BEAUFORT, S.C., Jan. 24 -- Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama stepped back from the brink in their war of words Thursday, with each pulling harsh radio ads from local airwaves and seeking to play down intraparty tensions.

Clinton retreated first. Under fire for airing misleading ads about her main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, her campaign has stopped a radio spot that suggested that Obama was a closet Republican who supported former president Ronald Reagan and the ideas of the 1994 revolt that swept the GOP to control of both chambers of Congress. The Illinois senator's campaign counterpunched with its own radio ad that pointed out Clinton's early support for the Iraq war and accused her of distorting Obama's words. "She'll say anything and change nothing," the ad said. But by late afternoon, it, too, was off the air.

Even former president Bill Clinton -- the catalyst for much of the heated rhetoric between the two campaigns this week -- toned down his comments in a series of town hall meetings that saw the return of his political alter ego, the policy wonk. At an event Thursday afternoon in Walterboro, he spoke for nearly 90 minutes about the mortgage crisis, education, clean energy, the Iraq war -- just about everything but his wife's chief competitor, who never drew a reference. "I'm just a hired hand here, and I work for nothing," Clinton told the audience as he began a discourse on workers' compensation.

His wife's campaign did not immediately explain why it pulled its radio spot, which had received a furious response from the Obama campaign and raised concerns among national Democratic Party elders that the Clinton team's aggressive actions could make it difficult to unify the party behind the eventual nominee.





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