Candidates dealing race card

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Big Dog. The Man. The Bubba factor.

After spending months stumping with his wife, Bill Clinton is now on his own, assuming the role of campaign pit bull.

Left alone in South Carolina as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigns in Super Tuesday states, the former president continues to target Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race.

On Wednesday, he defended himself against accusations that he and his wife had injected the issue of race into the Democratic presidential primary, and he accused Obama of putting out a "hit job" on him.

Scolding a reporter, Clinton said the Obama campaign was "feeding" the news media to keep the issue of race alive, obscuring positive coverage of Clinton's campaign.

Bill Clinton's remarks were delivered in an even tone but heightened the tension between the two camps.

Clinton dredged up complaints about voting in the Nevada caucuses Saturday, where Obama won more delegates but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and continued to talk of the role race will play in the primaries.

Bill Clinton said he expects blacks to vote for Obama and women to vote for Hillary Clinton, and the dynamic may cause his wife to lose Saturday's vote in South Carolina.

The comments mark one of the starkest commentaries yet on the possible role of race, although it has been a subtext of the Obama-Clinton rivalry for months.

They also furthered the Clintons' bid to play down Hillary Clinton's chances of winning in a state in which at least half the expected voters are black and where Obama seems to be ahead.

Bill Clinton "is raising questions about Obama and those questions get repeated in the media," said Boston-based Democratic consultant Mary Anne Marsh. "That's what voters are paying attention to."

On Wednesday, the Clinton campaign launched a new radio ad in South Carolina that repeated a discredited charge against Obama in what some Democrats said is part of an increasing pattern of hardball politics by the Clintons

The ad takes one line from an Obama interview — "The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years" — and juxtaposes it with GOP policies that Obama has never advocated.

"Really?" a voice-over says. "Aren't those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we're in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama's talking about?"

The Clinton campaign argued that it was simply quoting Obama. But in the original context, Obama was describing the dominance of GOP ideas in the 1980s and 1990s, without saying he backed them, and asserting that those ideas are of no use today.

Responding to the ad, Dick Harpootlian, the former chairman of South Carolina's Democratic Party, accused the Clintons of using the "politics of deception" and compared the former president to the late Lee Atwater, the GOP operative who used racial politics and wedge issues.

In response, Bill Clinton accused the Obama campaign of funneling negative smears through the compliant media.

"They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for," the former president chastised a CNN reporter, Jessica Yellin, who asked him for a response to Harpootlian.

"They just spin you up on this and you happily go along," Clinton said. As aides steered him away, Clinton scolded: "Shame on you."

In Washington, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman who endorsed Obama last week, castigated the former president for "glib cheap shots," saying both sides should settle down but placing the blame predominantly on Bill Clinton.

"That's beneath the dignity of a former president," Leahy said."He is not helping the Democratic Party."

That fear also was voiced by some neutral Democrats, who said the former president's aggressive role and the couple's recent harsh approach threaten to divide the party in the general vote.

A few prominent Democrats, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., have already spoken directly to Bill Clinton about the force of his Obama critiques.

There is some fear that if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, he could emerge personally battered and politically compromised. And if Hillary Clinton beats him, there is a concern it could come at a cost with black voters in particular, who could blame her for Obama's defeat, and stay at home in November.

"This is something that's kind of controlled. It's deliberate, methodical and thought out," said Kenneth Baer, a former speechwriter for Al Gore. "He's [Bill Clinton] the most powerful advocate Hillary Clinton has. Even when he appears not be effective, he is."

Compiled from The Denver Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Washington Post.