INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday dismissed criticism of her proposed summer gas tax "holiday" as "elite opinion" that reflects the views of economists, not ordinary Americans who drive a long way to work.
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," she said on ABC's "This Week" when asked to name a single economist who supported her call for a temporary tax break. "We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."
Clinton's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, has called her proposed moratorium on the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax a "gimmick" designed to win votes in Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate have said they have no plans before the summer to consider a temporary gas tax suspension. Clinton's proposal, also supported by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has been roundly criticized by economic analysts.
Butting heads on TV
Both Democrats took to the Sunday talk shows to press their case to voters two days before Tuesday's primaries. Polls show the two states split, with Obama leading in North Carolina and Clinton ahead in Indiana.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama criticized Clinton's threat to "totally obliterate" Iran -- if it were to launch a nuclear attack against Israel -- as sounding like "the cowboy diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, that we've seen out of George Bush."
"We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and in the meantime have made a series of strategic decisions that actually strengthen Iran," he said.
Clinton defended her remark, saying she was responding to a questioner who had asked about the possibility of Iran launching a nuclear attack on an ally. Such an attack would bring "massive retaliation against Iran," she said. She added that she doesn't believe Iran will launch such an attack, "but I sure want to make it abundantly clear to them that they would face a tremendous cost if they did such a thing."
The host of "This Week," George Stephanopoulos, a former top aide to Clinton's husband, President Clinton, also asked the New York senator about releasing the names of big-money donors to her husband's presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., so that voters could determine whether a potential conflict of interest existed. She said the names would not be released unless she were elected president -- and she seemed to blame her husband for the controversy.
