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Hillary: Rove 'obsessing' about me

BY GLENN THRUSH | NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU

February 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - Bush's Brain can't get Hillary off his mind, New York's junior senator charged yesterday.

Hillary Rodham Clinton says White House political guru Karl Rove is "obsessing" about her, citing Rove's recent prediction that Clinton will win her party's 2008 presidential nomination - but that "brittleness" will doom her in the general election.

"Karl Rove spends a lot of time obsessing about me," Clinton told the New York Post's Fred Dicker on his Albany-based WROW-AM radio show.

"He spends more time thinking about my political future than I do," she added, derisively referring to the Bush White House as "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight."

Yesterday, the anti-Clinton Regnery Publishing house put out a new Bush book, "Strategery," in which Rove reportedly tells author Bill Summon that Clinton is too popular and "hard-driving" to be beaten by other Democrats in 2008.

"She is the dominant player on their side of the slate," said Rove, known inside the Beltway as the president's "Brain." "Anybody who thinks that she's not going to be the candidate is kidding themselves."

Rove told Sammon that Clinton is too cautious and "philosophically very liberal," which will scuttle her in 2008.

Rove's "obsession" goes back years, Clinton aides said. "We have to do something about her," Rove reportedly told one-time GOP Senate hopeful Ed Cox in an e-mail last year, according to press accounts.

Clinton said Rove and top Republicans were fixating on her to distract attention from their failures. A call to the White House was not returned.

"Karl Rove is a brilliant strategist, so ... I'd say why are they spending so much time worrying about me?" she said. "Is it to divert attention from their own problems? ... What they're hoping is that all of their missteps ..., which are now numbering in the hundreds, are going to somehow be overlooked."

Clinton was considerably less candid when asked whom she would back in the Democratic gubernatorial primary between Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. She said, "I don't take positions in contested primaries."

"You're ducking again," said Dicker.

"Yes," Clinton replied.