THE NATION - Clinton leads the pack as a Republican target - Her healthcare proposal only solidifies her spot as the object of GOP presidential hopefuls' negative attention.
WASHINGTON — She may be the Democratic front-runner for president, but swift condemnations of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's healthcare plan Monday attested to her less enviable role as the No. 1 target for Republican attacks.
GOP presidential candidates rarely mention Democrats in the race -- except to invoke with dread the prospect of another Clinton presidency.
A summer fundraising letter from Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani's campaign focused almost entirely on what it portrayed as threats that Clinton would pose to America.
"Higher taxes, socialized medicine, liberal judges writing laws from the bench, a state of denial about the terrorists' war on us. . . . It's enough to give us nightmares," wrote the Giuliani campaign's national chairman, Pat Oxford. New York's former mayor, he added, would stop "the Clinton attack machine."
Joining Giuliani in singling out the New York senator have been former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and others.
Romney called a news conference outside a Greenwich Village hospital Monday to denounce Clinton's healthcare plan just before she released it in Iowa.
Mocking her leadership of the Clinton administration's failed 1993 attempt to overhaul the healthcare system, Romney said: "HillaryCare continues to be bad medicine."
"Fundamentally, I think she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies," he said.
For 15 years, Republican candidates and conservative talk-radio hosts have heaped scorn on Clinton. Now that she leads the Democratic field for president, her unpopularity among conservatives has made her an inviting target for Republicans -- even more so for those, like Giuliani and Romney, who are struggling to overcome a history of straying from party orthodoxy.
"Mr. Giuliani is looking around for those sorts of things, especially as he travels to more conservative states," said James Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in South Carolina.
Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said Republicans could "launch as many attacks as they like."
"They're feeling nervous at their own electoral prospects, because they know Sen. Clinton is the candidate who has the strength and experience to win the general election and become the next president," he said.
