A Day Later, Clinton Embraces Spitzer’s License Effort

That's it, she's toast! no way she wins in the General election now. Independents recoil from giving drivers licences to Illegals (after which, they could easily obtain passports and welfare and other document entitling them to government largess).

Lost in the "She tries to have it both ways" spin lifesaver that the Drive By's have thrown to her is the fact, recorded here below, that she is now on record as officially endorsing this crazy idea. This is eerily reminiscent of Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton, in what it says about the values of the candidate...T

A day after she appeared to struggle to give her views on the subject, Hillary Rodham Clinton offered support today for Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s effort to award New York driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, as her campaign sought to contain potentially damaging fallout from a what her own supporters saw as a tense and listless debate performance.

Mrs. Clinton’s statement affirming her support of Mr. Spitzer in his office came less than a day after she offered a muddled and hesitant position on the bill, prompting a round of denunciations by her opponents. It signaled the extent to which her advisers viewed that moment as the biggest misstep she made in the debate, and one with long-term potential to undermine her candidacy.

“Senator Clinton supports governors like Governor Spitzer who believe they need such a measure to deal with the crisis caused by this administration’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform,’” her campaign said.

Mrs. Clinton’s voice of support for Mr. Spitzer’s plan suggested her advisers believed it was politically wiser to embrace a position that could clearly hurt her in a general election rather than risk providing more fuel to what has emerged as a damaging line of criticism: That she, taking advantage of her dominant position in some polls, is not being candid about her views and about would she would do as president.

That argument was voiced by Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, in an interview leading up to the debate and set the framework for two hours of attacks on Mrs. Clinton. And it continued this morning as Democratic and Republican presidential candidates attacked her for her answer on Social Security.

“She is a habitual evader,” said Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod.
And Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican presidential candidate who has spent more time attacking Mrs. Clinton than any of his opponents, pounced as he offered a preview of what a Clinton-Giuliani race might be like, should both win their party’s nomination, in a radio interview with Glenn Beck.

“You know, she was being attacked all night for taking different positions in front of different audiences and then by the end of the night, she took different positions in front of the same audience,” he said. “It was pretty amazing. I mean, in politics I’ve never quite seen that before.”
Gerald W. McEntee, presented Mrs. Clinton with a pair of red boxing gloves today. (Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign fought back on a variety of fronts. It announced that she had won the endorsement of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union in a Washington news conference in which its president, Gerald W. McEntee, presented Mrs. Clinton with a pair of red boxing gloves and tried to put the best light on her performance the night before.

“Six guys against Hillary,” he said. “I’d call that a fair fight. This is one strong woman.”
Mrs. Clinton hoisted the gloves, declaring: “When it comes to fighting for America’s famlies I’ll go 10 rounds with anyone.”

Her campaign sought to stir sympathy of Mrs. Clinton -– in a way that was reminiscent of what happened after she was confronted by Rick Lazio, the Long Island Republican, in their Senate race in 2000 — by suggesting that she was the victim of ganging-up by a stage of presidential opponents and one of the moderators, Tim Russert.

“The Politics of Pile-On,” Mrs. Clintons’ Web site announced this morning. “What happens when the ‘politics of pile-on’ replaces the ‘politics of hope.’” The campaign later released a video that featured Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rivals saying her name repeatedly. A headline on the Drudge Report, which said it was reflecting thinking in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, read, “Scorn: As the Men Gang Up.”

Taken together, the events of the day suggested the difficulties Mrs. Clinton faces as she in effect tries to bridge two very different electorates: Democratic primary voters and general election voters. Going into the debate last night, she had been largely successful offering views on Iran, Iraq, and Social Security tailored to a general election audience
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