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Obama comes out swinging against Clinton in Wisconsin

BY LETTA TAYLER | letta.tayler@newsday.com

February 16, 2008

GREEN BAY, Wis. - A day after his Valentine's Day campaign break, Barack Obama cast aside the hearts and flowers Friday, saying Hillary Clinton attacks when she is down and had doomed health-care reform by "hollering at Republicans."

"She holds up boxing gloves, you know, saying she wants to fight," Obama said at a rally in Milwaukee, in reference to Clinton waving gloves Thursday in Ohio while declaring that the nation needs a "fighter" in the White House.

"We don't need more fighting," Obama countered. "We need some getting together, solving some problems."

Clinton later fired back, portraying her rival as light on substance. "This primary election offers a very big choice to the voters of Ohio," she said at a chili restaurant in Cincinnati. "You can choose speeches or solutions."

"She's right. Speeches alone don't do anything," Obama rebutted. "But you know what? Neither do negative attacks." Referring to Clinton's failed health care initiative as first lady, he added: "Hollering at Republicans and engaging in petty partisan politics didn't help health care get done."

Former President Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife in Texarkana, Texas, joined the fray, saying Obama's health care plan would leave 15 million uninsured.

The war of words comes as Hillary Clinton seeks to regain momentum after Obama's eight-state winning streak since last Saturday. They face off Tuesday in Wisconsin, where Obama is favored, and March 4 in Clinton's must-win states of Texas and Ohio, where she leads.

In another coup, Obama yesterday was endorsed by the 1.9-million-member Service Employees International Union, which could help him cut into Clinton's blue-collar and Latino base. Hoping to stem that incursion, Clinton in Cincinnati declared herself the "candidate of, from and for the middle class."

Obama, who began his accusations at a news conference in Milwaukee and continued them there, in Oshkosh and in Green Bay, insisted he didn't want to engage in a "tit-for-tat."

Instead, he said, he was responding to Clinton's attacks from a day earlier, when she accused him of caving into the nuclear power industry and faulted him for refusing to debate her in Wisconsin. She repeated some of those attacks in new ads launched here yesterday.

Still, his remarks were scathing. "Senator Clinton, periodically when she is down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal," he said at the news conference.

Obama also defended his position on nuclear power oversight. On Thursday, Clinton noted that Obama boasted early in the campaign that he'd passed a tough oversight bill, without mentioning that the final version was watered down, and didn't even make it to the Senate floor.

"We made every effort to get the strongest bill possible" in a Republican-controlled Senate, Obama said of the bill, noting that Clinton had voted for it, too.

Obama, who is wooing independents and Republicans, cast presumptive GOP nominee John McCain as a clone of President George W. Bush for supporting the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

McCain, speaking in Oshkosh before Obama stumped there, slammed him for hedging on whether he would accept public funding as he had promised if he wins the nomination. Obama, who has raised far more cash than McCain, said his campaign would contact McCain on the issue if he becomes the nominee.