Who knew--Clinton dodging hard questions?

Rick Pearson and John McCormick:

Believing that Hillary Clinton's campaign has shifted from promoting its inevitability to defending its electability, rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards on Sunday contended the Democratic presidential front-runner is dodging hard questions and not giving specific answers to Iowa's voters.

But Clinton contended that she "probably answered 5,000 questions in the last 10 months" as she spoke to more than 300 people at a regional fundraiser for local Democrats in northwestern Iowa. It was her only reference to her opponents' criticisms as she delivered her basic campaign stump speech.

With an eye toward an accelerated election calendar and Iowa's Jan. 3 leadoff caucuses, the rhetoric and the battle among the contenders seeking to become Clinton's chief rival for the Democratic nomination has become sharper and more intense.

"It's now crunch time," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told the five-county Iowa fundraising audience. While Richardson said it was "critically important that Democrats not tear each other down, be positive," he also urged the room full of potential caucusgoers to judge his electability against that of the other contenders.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama said he believed a Clinton nomination would make it difficult for Democrats to capture the White House next year.

"I'm not somebody who believes she can't win," the Illinois Democrat said. "I believe that it's going to be harder for her to win because I think a lot of voters go in with some preconceptions about her that are going to be very difficult to overcome."

Obama suggested Clinton, a senator from New York, is dodging tough questions along the campaign trail, such as how she would reform Social Security.

"I think that what Sen. Clinton has been doing is running a textbook Washington campaign," he said. "What that says is that you don't answer directly tough questions, you don't present tough choices directly to the American people, for fear that your answers might not be popular, you might make yourself a target for the Republicans in the general election."

Obama also maintained that Clinton "hasn't given a firm timetable in terms of executing a withdrawal" of U.S. troops from Iraq. He said he would have all combat units out of Iraq within 16 months of the start of a redeployment.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, echoed Obama's criticism of Clinton during and after a speech on reforming what he called the "corrupt" culture of Washington at the Iowa Historical Building in Des Moines.

"She says she's for ending the war, but she'll continue combat missions in Iraq. She says she's for standing up to [President] Bush on Iraq and she votes with Bush on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," Edwards told reporters. "I mean, I don't know."

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She has always avoided tough questions and the media has usually covered for her. This was certainly true of her Senate campaigns and she is following the same script in this race. answering the "tough" questions is a way to lose votes. If she gave an honest answer on the withdrawal of troops she would lose votes of the Democrat kook base that wants desperately to lose the war that we are winning. Edwards and Obama are just more honest about their desperation for defeat. What they do not seem to comprehend is that most Americans despite their concerns about the war do not want to lose, at least not as badly as the Democrat left wants to lose.

Clinton usually falls back on the Kerry formula of being "smarter" in how you lose. The fact is that none of these candidates know much about the wise use of force, much less how we need to use it to defeat an enemy dedicated to our destruction. We are in the process of defeating the enemy in what he has described as his central front in his war against us and these candidates want to throw that away to appeal to kooks who want us to lose so that it will be harder for us to use force in the future against our enemies.