Romney Blasts Iranian Leader

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

INDICTING, NOT INVITING

Romney Blasts Iranian Leader

Forget about Fred Thompson's "Law & Order" history. It's Mitt Romney's campaign ads that are ripped from the headlines.

The former Massachusetts governor yesterday continued his aggressive media strategy with a 60-second radio ad blasting the United Nations' decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak in New York.

"What we should be doing is indicting Ahmadinejad under the Genocide Convention," Romney (R) says in the spot running in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.

In the ad, an announcer recounts a 2006 visit to Harvard University by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The ad says Romney refused to provide Khatami "VIP treatment."

"Governor Romney called the invitation a 'disgrace' and refused to grant Khatami a police escort," the announcer says. "Now another Iranian president is visiting America, coming to New York, and Governor Mitt Romney is leading the opposition."

While Romney took to the airwaves with his anti-Ahmadinejad message, other candidates stuck to condemning the Iranian leader's rhetoric from the campaign trail.

"The hateful lies that he may utter about Israel, the Holocaust -- the answer is for us to promote the truth and show the world the values and ideals that we hold dear," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in New York.

Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) said that he found Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel "abhorrent." Speaking at a fundraiser in Chicago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized Columbia University for hosting the Iranian president, saying that the leader did not deserve a platform for Iran's "policies of hate and destruction." Fellow Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani and Thompson also criticized Columbia's decision to invite Ahmadinejad, with Giuliani calling the event "highly inappropriate."

-- Michael D. Shear

NAME DROPPING

Obama, Clinton Gain Support

Barack Obama picked up the endorsement yesterday of Gordon Fischer, a well-known Iowa Democrat, as his campaign stepped up its two-pronged effort to raise money before the end of the quarter and prove he is best poised to win the general election.

"The reason I support Senator Obama is that, like all Democrats, I am desperate to win the White House, and I am absolutely convinced that Senator Obama is the candidate who has the best chance against any of the Republicans in the field," Fischer said in a conference call with reporters yesterday morning. While Fischer praised Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) also had her own big-ticket endorsement to announce: Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a former '08 candidate himself, announced his support for Clinton yesterday, after it was reported over the weekend that he would be giving her the nod.

-- Anne E. Kornblut

HIV/AIDS AGENDA

Edwards Wants More Funds

John Edwards laid out a detailed plan to fight both a national and international problem: the spread of HIV/AIDS. In a health-care event in Washington, the candidate called for increased funding to provide medicine to people around the world who have the disease, as well as targeted programs in the United States focused on blacks and Hispanics, who suffer infection at higher rates than whites. Edwards also called for a Cabinet-level post on global poverty and criticized the Bush administration for focusing too much on abstinence as a way to combat AIDS.

At the forum, the former trial lawyer, who has received millions of dollars in donations from fellow attorneys in his two presidential runs, said lawsuits against doctors were not a huge cause of increased health-care costs, but he also called for experts to certify that a case has merit before the suit goes to court. "I think that the bulk of the problem is created when cases are filed in the legal system that should never be filed," Edwards said.

-- Perry Bacon Jr.

THE RELUCTANT PUNDIT

Bush Again Picks Clinton

Guess he just can't resist. No matter how much President Bush says he won't play "pundit-in-chief," he apparently has been telling anyone who will listen that he thinks Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a new book, Bush is quoted as predicting Clinton's win, although he is careful to express confidence that the Republican nominee, whoever it is, will beat her.

"She's got a national presence, and this is becoming a national primary," the president told Washington Examiner White House correspondent Bill Sammon for his book, "The Evangelical President," which is out this week.

Bush made sure to add: "I think our candidate can beat her, but it's going to be a tough race. I will work to see to it that a Republican wins and therefore don't accept the premise that a Democrat will win."

-- Peter Baker