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Clinton, Giuliani wobble with one month to go
Clinton, Giuliani wobble with one month to go
Monday December 03, 2007
Frontrunners are faltering as challengers such as Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama rewrite the script just a month before first votes are cast in the Republican and Democratic White House races.
Gone are the days when media profiles painted Hillary Clinton as the "inevitable" Democratic nominee, while former Arkansas governor Huckabee has come from nowhere to shake up the Republican field.
After months of shadow-boxing in the longest and most open US campaign in decades, the moment is looming when candidates must either take out their rivals, or face a knockout themselves.
Huckabee, a wisecracking Baptist pastor playing to the social values of the religious right, declined to say whether his Mormon rival Mitt Romney was a Christian in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.
"You know, Mitt Romney has to answer that," he said.
"We all have to personally answer for what our faith is and whether we call ourselves a Christian or we call ourselves Jewish or Muslim.
And it's not for me to determine what somebody else's faith is."
Huckabee, buoyed by a new poll that put him on top of the Republican pack in Iowa, also attacked former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as being in hock to Wall Street.
The Iowa caucuses on January 3 will kick off the nominating contests for the Republican and Democratic parties ahead of November's presidential election.
The Des Moines Register newspaper had support for Huckabee among likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa running at 29 percent.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has spent millions of dollars in the state and led the polls for months, came in second at 24 percent, with Giuliani trailing at 13 percent.
Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's long-time political guru, said the latest numbers suggested trouble for both Giuliani and Clinton, whose own campaign was shaken by a hostage drama in New Hampshire on Friday.
"And it's going to be very troublesome for both parties' frontrunners, because we're in uncharted territory. There's very little time between these primaries," he said on Fox News Sunday.
Three recent Iowa polls showed Obama leading Clinton and rival John Edwards, though the race is still a statistical tie. Polls also show Clinton's wide lead narrowing somewhat in New Hampshire, which holds primaries on January 8.
Illinois Senator Obama edged out Clinton by 28 points to 25 in the Des Moines Register poll. Former senator John Edwards was third with 23 percent.
As her poll numbers have softened, Clinton has launched a full-bore assault on Obama, questioning his honesty and experience.
An unraveling of support for the New York senator may deepen as more voters tune in, said Tom Baldino, professor of political science at Wilkes University, Pennsylvania.
"I suspect her support may be a mile wide, and an inch deep," he said.
Worrying for Clinton, an American Research Group poll in Iowa showed her down 10 percentage points in a month among women -- the demographic underpinning of her campaign.
And things could get worse next week when Obama hits the trail with billionaire chat show megastar Oprah Winfrey.
But Clinton still holds some trump cards, with support from committed older voters and a large lead in nationwide polls.
AFP
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