Friends, foes eye Clinton as she seeks a balance

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to strike the right balance between staying out of the daily political maelstrom and setting herself up for a possible second presidential run. But her fans and foes are making that difficult.

Nearly six months after departing the State Department, Clinton finds herself in the middle of an early effort by both parties to prepare for her return to politics even as she keeps to a schedule of highly paid private speeches, work on her book and her family's global foundation.

Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, has not said whether she'll seek the White House in 2016 but grassroots activists are already at work on a super political action committee called Ready for Hillary. It has rallied local supporters, started a fundraising campaign and rolled out prominent endorsements.

Republicans, meanwhile, vow to dissect her work during the Obama administration -- especially last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya -- and use her specter as a fundraising tool.

The efforts to define Clinton, who carries the scars of once being seen as an inevitable president during her 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, underscore her tricky balancing act.

If she acts too political, the strong approval ratings built up from her globe-trotting, above-the-fray role as secretary of state could suffer. If she allows the presidential talk to become too loud, she might again become stuck with the inevitable nominee tag, making her vulnerable to a liberal upstart in a Democratic primary.

Yet if she avoids the limelight too much, she might create an opening for another Democrat to emerge or allow the steady criticism from Republicans over her tenure at the State Department to sully her image.

Republicans are in the early stages of efforts to chip away at her record at the State Department. American Crossroads, the GOP group tied to Republican strategist Karl Rove, released a web video in May that suggested Clinton was less than truthful in the Benghazi case, and emphasize that it happened "all under Hillary Clinton's watch."

An independent review last year blamed the State Department for inadequate security but largely absolved Clinton of wrongdoing.

Separately, America Rising, a Republican super political action committee led by Matt Rhoades, who served as Republican Mitt Romney's campaign manager, created the Stop Hillary PAC and has been raising money off a potential Clinton campaign.

Ready for Hillary, meanwhile, has no official ties to Clinton. But the group is encouraging her to run and laying the groundwork for a future campaign.