New strategy for Hillary: talk, then attack
BY GLENN THRUSH
Newsday Washington Bureau

June 23, 2006, 9:47 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- As Democrats spent the past week presenting two different Iraq withdrawal plans, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has offered her party a Third Way out of the mess: Make a speech, then go attack the Republicans.

"I think we come out more united," said Clinton, who addressed the centrist New Democrat Network in Washington Friday.

"We're not blindly united like the other side is, where they are like the three monkeys, Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak no Evil. They're not going to say anything negative about the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense or anybody else."

The former first lady, whose speeches are frequently interrupted by peace protesters, opposed an amendment calling for complete troop withdrawals that was sponsored by potential 2008 presidential hopefuls John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). Instead, she backed a plan to start troop redeployments by the end of this year, the first time Clinton has ever attached a specific date to a withdrawal plan.

Both amendments were killed by the Senate's Republican minority, which decried the efforts as "cut-and-run."

Clinton responded by issuing her most anti-war comments yet, calling the Republican stance "a disgrace" and the GOP's strategy a "dead end."

Clinton's camp hopes such comments will ease anti-Hillary feelings among peace Democrats, while salvaging an otherwise dismal week for a party that had seemed to be gaining traction against the GOP.

"She looked like an adult," said Chicago-based political consultant David Axelrod. "I think she comported herself very well. She looked very level-headed and responsible."

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the Clinton-friendly Third Way Foundation, thought she had found the "sweet spot" in the debate.

But Jonathan Tasini, an anti-war candidate who plans to run against her in the Democratic primary, said, "Hillary Clinton voted to prolong the violence and killing in Iraq."

One major Democratic donor thought "she should have voted no and not drawn attention to herself." But Clinton isn't following that playbook.

"Although unity is important, it is not the most important value," she said on Friday.