DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) – White House candidates battled in duelling rallies and airwaves saturated with attacks ads Saturday, five days before Iowa activists make their picks in the first 2008 nominating contests.
Democratic hopeful Barack Obama turned his fire on rival John Edwards, and kept up the heat on former first lady Hillary Clinton, in the latest hostilities in a running soundbite joust over who can best spark change.
Republican rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney meanwhile swapped jabs, betraying rising tensions as candidates criss-crossed the frigid state chasing wide-open party nominations, ahead of the leadoff caucuses on Thursday. Edwards, locked in a cut-throat chase with Clinton on Obama in Iowa, and knowing he needs a strong performance to keep his populist campaign alive, vowed to stamp out the influence of big business on government.
“I want to make an announcement today,” the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee said in Washington, Iowa. “No corporate lobbyist or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government will work in my White House. We will not replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats.” Obama’s campaign had earlier accused Edwards of accepting cash from a group run by a former aide outside campaign finance limits. “If Edwards can’t stand up to his own former aides, how can he stand up to the special interests in Washington?” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. Obama meanwhile took another shot at Clinton, who was on a bus tour of heavily Democratic eastern Iowa.
“You can’t argue that you are the master of a broken system in Washington and you’ve been there for years and you are somehow … the best qualified to bring about change,” he said, according to the Des Moines Register. Romney, overtaken in an Iowa poll surge by folksy Baptist preacher Huckabee, opened a two-front war by hammering Senator John McCain, who is on the rise in New Hampshire which votes January 8.
“McCain championed a bill to let every illegal immigrant stay in America permanently,” the ad warned, hitting the Arizona senator for backing an ill-fated Senate bill which provided a long path to citizenship for illegals. Illegal immigration is a boiling issue for Republicans, and helped drive down McCain this year. Recently though, the 71-year-old has been rising again, prompting one Iowa columnist Saturday to dub him “The Comeback Codger.”
Polls show Romney, who needs wins in both early voting states trails Huckabee in Iowa and is under fierce pressure from McCain in New Hampshire. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, hopes to capitalize on discontent among 2008 challengers with the Republican field, particularly among evangelical Christian voters who helped elect George W. Bush.
“The world’s eyes will be on Iowa on the night of January 3,” Huckabee told supporters in the small town of Indianola, Iowa, accusing Romney, a multi-millionaire former businessman, of trying to crush him in a 20-1 campaign spending blitz. Clinton and Obama meanwhile set off on gruelling new daylong bus tours across Iowa’s icy highways, touting their duelling visions of political change, the issue on which the Democratic race is turning.
Edwards planned an evening rally in state capitol Des Moines after a punishing swing through Democratic districts in east Iowa. The battle between Clinton and Obama degenerated Friday over a remark by the 46-year-old Illinois senator about how his foreign policy spurs had not been earned by taking “teas with diplomats” — an apparent swipe at Clinton.
The Clinton camp hit back with a statement from former secretary of state Madeleine Albright saying the former first lady had represented the United States in refugee camps, clinics, orphanages, and villages all around the world, including places where “tea is not the usual drink.” The two camps had also sparred over their response to the assassination of ex-Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, which was seized on by candidates to show leadership spurs and experience on the world stage.