Dems clash over jihadist fight

Democratic presidential hopefuls hit Trump

MANCHESTER, United States, Dec 20, (Agencies): Hillary Clinton and other Democratic presidential hopefuls used Donald Trump as a political bogeyman Saturday to highlight their own calls to defeat jihadist extremists without the bigotry and bluster brandished by their top Republican rival.

Former secretary of state Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland ex-governor Martin O’Malley each hit on the need to boost national security, raise the minimum wage and protect rights of women, minorities and the disadvantaged as they faced off in New Hampshire.

But they had heated exchanges on the economy, guns, tackling the terrorist threat, and the role of the United States abroad.

With just over six weeks before the first votes are cast in the nomination race, on Feb 1 in Iowa, Sanders and O’Malley are running out of time to blunt the momentum of the former top US diplomat, who is 25 points ahead of rival Sanders in national polling compiled by RealClearPolitics.com. O’Malley trails them both badly. It was their party’s third debate of the primary election season -- the last of 2015 and their first since the attacks in San Bernardino, California, where a radicalized married couple killed 14 people.

But the candidates also took turns hitting the Trump punching bag, as they hurled outrage about the Republican’s fear-mongering and recent controversial comments about immigrants -- in particular, his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Americans, Clinton said, “need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears.”

“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter,”

On Saturday, Trump began his appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a swipe at Bush’s performance at the debate earlier in the week.

“It was so sad to watch him. It was just sad,” Trump told an audience of about a thousand.

Trump came back to Bush several Clinton said of the self-declared Islamic State extremist group, claiming that jihadists are “showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

Trump fired back on that point, tweeting overnight that Clinton had “lied.”

The New York Times was among several media outlets that found no proof to back up Clinton’s claim.

Rebuke

O’Malley also offered a harsh rebuke to the “political danger” wielded by Trump and other “unscrupulous leaders (who) try to turn us upon each other.”

The country will rise to the challenge of the IS extremists, but only if Americans never surrender their values “to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths. We are a better country than this.”

Trump’s apparent popularity has only grown in recent weeks since his most contentious remarks. The political neophyte tops most Republican national polls and is putting establishment candidates like Jeb Bush in knots.

While the Democrats united against Trump, Sanders clashed at length with Clinton over how to tackle extremism, opposing her call for a no-fly zone over Syria and for focusing on ousting that country’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Sanders, who is more comfortable talking about economic inequality and financial abuse, topics that are the cornerstones of his campaign, was deeply skeptical.

“The United States at the same time cannot successfully fight Assad and ISIS,” he said. “ISIS now is the major priority. Let’s get rid of Assad later.”

O’Malley pointedly looked back at how several US-backed regime changes

times during a meandering speech that lasted more than an hour, rejecting out of hand any possible Bush endorsement (“It doesn’t mean anything”) and opining on the former Florida governor’s capabilities (“Close to incompetent”).

Bush isn’t the first Republican presidential candidate to swing at Trump. Ohio

Sasha Obama (left), US President Barack Obama (second left), Malia Obama (second right), and US First Lady Michelle Obama arrive at Hickam Air Force Bace in Honolulu, Hawaii on Dec 19. Obama and his family are in Hawaii for

vacation. (AFP)

fomented chaos. He singled out Libya in 2011, when Clinton was the top US diplomat and supported ousting Muammar Gaddafi, only to see the country descend into chaos, with large swaths now susceptible to becoming jihadist safe havens.

“We probably let our lust for regime toppling get ahead of the practical considerations for stability in that region,” O’Malley said.

Sanders piled on, reminding viewers of Clinton’s 2002 Senate vote authorizing president George W. Bush’s use of military force in Iraq.

Clinton insisted she was not ready to send US boots into Syria and Iraq, saying she had a strategy to “combat and defeat ISIS without getting us involved in another ground war.”

Strategy

Clinton backed elements of President Barack Obama’s strategy to fight Islamic State militants in a debate on Saturday in which she clashed with top rival Bernie Sanders over national security and the economy.

Clinton came under fire from Republicans even before the debate was over for optimistically saying “we now finally are where we need to be” in Syria, and was criticized by Sanders for being too quick to push for regime change.

The debate was the Democrats’ first since the deadly Dec 2 attack by a pair of radicalized Muslims in San Bernardino, California, which along with the November attacks in Paris elevated national security to the top of the campaign agenda.

Republicans have criticized Obama’s handling of Islamic State and have sought to link the former secretary of state to what they say is a failed strategy.

US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders apologized to Clinton and his own supporters Saturday

Gov. John Kasich and an outside group backing him, for example, have attacked Trump for months in press releases and digital advertisements. But as Bush engaged repeatedly with Trump in Tuesday’s debate, Kasich largely avoided taking on the real estate mogul.

Bush, for his part, says he’s stepping night for a breach of her campaign’s valuable voter data, seeking to put the controversy to rest in a debate that quickly moved on to national security concerns and Americans’ heightened fear of terrorism.

Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, kept an eye on the general election, sharply criticizing Donald Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States. She called the leader of the Republican race the Islamic State’s “best recruiter.”

“Mr Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people,” said Clinton, the former secretary of state.

Clinton and Sanders, her closest challenger, entered Saturday night’s debate in the midst of one of their fiercest fights — about the campaign itself rather than a national or international issue. Clinton’s campaign accused Sanders’ team of stealing information used to target voters and anticipate what issues might motivate them. In response to the breach, the Democratic National Committee temporarily cut off Sanders’ team’s access to its own data, a move the Vermont senator said Saturday was an “egregious act.”

Still, Sanders said his staff had acted improperly.

“This is not the type of campaign that we run,” he said. Sanders’ campaign fired a worker involved in the breach but also used the controversy to raise money, sending an email to supporters that said the national party had placed “its thumb on the scales in support of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” His campaign said after the debate it had suspended two more aides.

Clinton quickly accepted the apology Saturday night, saying “We should move on because I don’t think the American people are all that interested in this.” up his criticism of Trump now because Trump is displaying shallow ideas on foreign policy.

“Did you hear him talk about foreign policy in the debate?” Bush said, referencing Trump’s garbled answer on modernizing the nuclear triad — intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. “He has no clue.”

Of Vladimir Putin, Bush said, “he will respect strength, not a clown show.”

Trump leads the polls in New Hampshire, where success in the Feb. 9 primary could make or break Bush’s ability to continue running. Bush is competing with Kasich, New Jersey Gov Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to carry the party’s establishment mantle. And he’s casting his decision to go after Trump, in part, as a move to save the Republican Party.

“The idea that he’s actually running for president and insulting people is deeply discouraging to be honest with you, and we should reject that out of hand,” Bush said. “A guy like that should not be the front-running candidate of our great party — that is not how we win.”

It’s a welcome approach to some New Hampshire voters.

“It’s really important for New Hampshire to send a message that we don’t want Trump or (Texas Sen. Ted) Cruz to take over the Republican party,” said Dick Beyer, a self-described moderate Republican who saw Bush on Saturday morning.

Still, Bush has a long way to climb with national polls showing his support at under 5 percent, while Trump nears 40 percent in some polls. (AP)