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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (116164)	10/4/2003 12:12:58 AM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Clark uses the rhetoric of President Bush to defend challenges to his new party credentials. "I say bring it on". Opps, isn't that sending the wrong message by talking like a Republican. It didn't play well in New Hampshire Clark on hot seat for praise of GOP By SCOTT SHEPARD The Atlanta Journal-Constitution MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, on his first trip to New Hampshire as a Democratic presidential candidate, used the bold rhetoric of President Bush to defend challenges to his new party credentials. "I say bring it on,"Clark said Friday when asked by voters whether he is prepared for criticism of his past support for Republican presidents, including praise of Bush. . Clark's phrasing -- nearly identical to the taunt the president delivered to terrorists earlier this summer in discussing violence in Iraq -- stunned some political observers trailing the general on his foray into New Hampshire. "I couldn't believe he said that," said James Pindell, managing editor of PoliticsNH.com, a New Hampshire-based Web site that follows political developments. "His past praise of Bush has already made some Democrats in this state suspicious of him." Those suspicions were fanned earlier Friday when Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of Clark's nine rivals for the 2004 Democratic nomination, accused the retired four-star general of joining the Democratic Party for "political convenience, not conviction." Similarly, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, another rival, told reporters in Washington that "the biggest problem [Clark is] going to have is convincing people he's a Democrat" after the disclosure of his remarks praising Bush at adinner in Arkansas two years ago. And Sen. John Kerry's campaign argued that Clark was more specific in his praise of the Bush administration two years ago than he was in explaining why he's a newly minted Democrat. The criticism of Clark came the day after his first debate appearance withother Democratic candidates. There, he described his coming to the Democratic Party as "an incredible journey" prompted by his disillusionment with Bush's "reckless" policies on taxes and national security. The criticism also came as the latest New Hampshire poll showed Clark apparently cutting into Dean's support just a week after entering the Democratic presidential race. Dean, who held a 21-point lead over Kerry a month ago in a Zogby International poll, led the Massachusetts senator 30 percent to 20 percent in the Zogby poll conducted Sept. 24-25 and released Friday. The poll of likely Democratic primary voters found 10 percent favored Clark, up from 2 percent in August. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Clark has more to explain to voters if he wants to retain the polling lead. "There is Clark's voting record for Nixon, Reagan and other Republicans," Sabato said. "He now presents himself as a liberal Democrat. This is an extraordinary transformation of personal and party ideology that requires far more explanation than Clark has given." Clark undertook that chore here Friday in his lunchtime meeting with a handful of Democratic voters at the famous Merrimack Restaurant, the scene of scores of political events in the fabled history of New Hampshire presidential primaries. "Everyone's entitled to a few youthful indiscretions," Clark said in response to a question from Peter Sands, a self-described lifelong Democrat, about his votes for Reagan and Nixon. But it was a more recent event that prompted Lieberman's outburst: a May 2001 address by Clark to the Arkansas Republican Party in support of the Bush administration's fiscal and national security policies. "I was fighting [Bush's] reckless economic strategy while Wes Clark was working to forward the Republican agenda by raising money for the Republican Party," Lieberman said. In the 2001 speech, Clark called Reagan "truly a great American leader" who "helped our country win the Cold War" and the first President Bush a man of "courage" and "vision" who had exercised "tremendous leadership and statesmanship." Clark also said he was "very glad we've got the great team in office: men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul O'Neill -- people I know very well -- [and] our president, George W. Bush." Clark spokesman Mark Fabiani, in response to Lieberman's criticism, said, "I think Sen. Lieberman is an increasingly desperate candidate and it's unfortunate that instead of articulating a vision for the future as General Clark has with his 'New American Patriotism,' Senator Lieberman is attacking other Democrats." ajc.com.