THE WASHINGTON POAST, OBVIOUSLY BACKING SHILLARY, HAS 5 PAGES OF DIATRIBE ON HOW GREAT SHE IS!!!! I'VE POSTED PAGE ONE AND PARTS OF OTHER PAGES. I'VE READ GARBAGE BEFORE, BUT THIS IS SOMETHING ELSE!!!!!

NEXT THEY WILL BE NOMINATING HER FOR SAINTHOOD!

AND ISN'T IT STRANGE HOW WONDERFUL IT IS FOR SHILLARY TO ATTACK OBAMA, BUT ROMNEY CATCHES H--- FOR IT!!!!

Turning It Around

Down in polls after an Iowa loss, Hillary Clinton had no victory speech for New Hampshire. But then an unexpected thing happened: She won.

By Peter Baker and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2008; Page A01

In a campaign run by conference calls, this one stood out. It was Dec. 2, just a month before the Iowa caucuses, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was furious. She did not yell, but her voice, serious and deep, bristled with irritation over how things were going for her in Iowa.

Iowans were not getting her message, she complained, and her staff did not seem to grasp the depth of the problem. "Our communications just isn't measuring up to our field and fundraising," Clinton said, according to participants. She snapped at aides trying to reassure her. When campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle promised a new Iowa plan by day's end, Clinton groused that she had been asking for one for weeks. Solis Doyle flew to Des Moines the next day and checked in to the Embassy Suites for the duration.

The crisis in the Clinton camp would deepen in the coming weeks as the New York senator and national front-runner headed to a devastating defeat in Iowa, only to rebound with a surprising comeback victory Tuesday in New Hampshire. The dramatic swings of fortune were classic Clinton, the latest manifestation of a boom-and-bust cycle that has helped define Hillary and Bill Clinton for the past 16 years. From defeat comes victory, from adversity comes triumph -- it was a familiar narrative filled with moments of anger, grievance and vindication.

The path to the presidency is rarely smooth, but the turmoil of the past few weeks disrupted what had appeared to be an extraordinarily methodical march to the Democratic nomination. A campaign built on a strategy of establishing that a woman was experienced enough to be president succeeded so much that suddenly Clinton became the symbol of status quo running against the agent of change, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Lulled into false confidence by a gusher of money and sky-high poll numbers, the Clinton team recognized the threat late and was forced to retool literally on the fly as it jetted from Iowa to New Hampshire last Thursday night.

Along the way came the sorts of critical strategic choices and internal debates that often characterize high-level campaigns, particularly in Clinton world, according to an array of campaign insiders interviewed in recent weeks.

Bill Clinton and Mark Penn, the campaign's chief strategist, repeatedly agitated for an early assault on Obama, only to run into resistance from other advisers and campaign officials in Iowa and New Hampshire who thought it would backfire, according to Clinton advisers.

Howard Wolfson, the communications director, pressed to find ways to humanize the candidate, while Penn thought that was not the highest priority and focused instead on proving how tough she is, several advisers said. At one point, they said, Penn and media consultant Mandy Grunwald had engaged in so many "raging debates," as one put it, that they had stopped speaking.

By the last few days in New Hampshire, Clinton was no longer soliciting advice from her aides so much as telling them what to do. She sharpened her attack on Obama, portrayed him as a phony and fired back passionately in a debate Saturday night. She began mapping out a staff shake-up on the assumption that she would lose New Hampshire. She was no longer the inevitable candidate.

"Right after Iowa there was a lot of frustration," said Robert Zimmerman, a top Clinton fundraiser who tried to reassure her donors. "But then she seemed to turn a corner. She was going after primary voters, not fighting the general election. Since Saturday, they've been calling me, saying, 'It's about time. Why didn't this happen earlier?' "

But in the end, it may have been the exhaustion and stress of the moment that helped save her. Having been told so many times to reveal a little more of her personal side, she let down her guard on election eve in response to a question about how she was doing, choking up with emotion as she talked about how important the election is to the country.

Within 24 hours, New Hampshire voters -- especially women -- were streaming to the polls to vote for her, shocking everyone, including the candidate. Clinton had two prepared speeches, one for a "big defeat" and one for a "close defeat," an aide said. No victory speech had been written. Several top strategists agreed among themselves to resign if she lost.

"Everybody has a near-death experience," another adviser said. Now they hope that is all it was.

FROM PAGE 2 OF ARTICLE:

"We should have taken Obama out earlier," a rueful campaign adviser said last week. "We should have taken him out when we were in a position of strength. We would have taken some flak, but we should have done it."

FROM PAGE 4:

The former president was seething over what he was seeing. When a campaign fundraiser took him aside after a Philadelphia event, Clinton grew visibly agitated at what he heard. The fundraiser, Mark A. Aronchik, told Clinton that he had spent time in Iowa and that voters there did not relate to the candidate personally.

"He was really bothered by the fact that not only had he heard that from me, but he had heard it from others," Aronchik said. Clinton reassured Aronchik that the campaign planned to send a wave of surrogates.

Clinton then launched into what was becoming a common refrain in private and, eventually, in public, complaining bitterly that the media had skewed coverage of the contest. "How in the world has she been defined as removed and unemotional and detached?" he asked. "That's just wrong."

FROM PAGE 5:

Like refugees from a war zone, the Clinton team flew out of Iowa in the middle of the night, taking the wounded campaign to New Hampshire, where they had barely five days to turn things around. Within hours, they were working the phones to do damage control. The team had arranged to staff 175 call centers to target small donors with personal appeals urging continued support. Six conference calls were set up, led in succession by Clinton, her husband and four top campaign officials.

"She spoke very candidly about her pleasures and displeasures with the way things had gone," said Michael Bronfein, a Baltimore financier who was on the call with the candidate. "She reminded us not to lose perspective. That this was a marathon, not a sprint."

Other Clinton fundraisers began registering their concerns. Suzy Tompkins Buell, a top bundler from the San Francisco Bay area, called finance director Jonathan Mantz to say that "Hillary has been too reserved about her emotions." The caution was hurting her in comparison to Obama. "Hillary has to be very guarded, where he's been very open, from his personal indiscretions or his cocaine or whatever," Buell said she told Mantz.

Clinton decided she had to show her passion and at the same time take the gloves off against Obama. On Friday, campaign officials discussed running a negative television ad about him, but decided time was too short before the primary to do so. Instead, she would take him on during a Saturday debate and on the stump.

During the debate, she flashed anger when Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) teamed up against her. Aides initially blanched, worried that she would look like she had lost control. But they came to the conclusion that she looked determined. They also panicked briefly on Monday when word first came via BlackBerry and telephone that the candidate had broken down during a stop at a diner. In fact, she had not cried, but choked up as she talked about how important the race is for her and the country.

Emotions whipsawed throughout those frenetic days. On Saturday, with the approval of the Big Five, Penn publicly issued a memo mocking the Obama campaign for not capitalizing on its Iowa win, titled "WHERE IS THE BOUNCE?" The bounce showed up in the polls the very next day. Bill Clinton defended Penn during a campaign stop Monday night. "It wasn't his best day," Clinton explained. "He was hurt. He felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa."

So did the former president, and now his rage was on display. "It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war" when he said in 2004 he did not know how he would have voted on the Iraq resolution, Clinton told students at Dartmouth College on the eve of the primary. "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

And then a funny thing happened. She won. Clinton was as surprised as anyone and went to her campaign party to deliver what originally was to be a concession speech. The message was no longer that she was in it simply to win, but to win for a greater cause. "Let's give America," she said, "the kind of comeback New Hampshire has just given me."

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