Clinton Fires at Rivals After Debate Pile-On

Jan. 6, 2008 — -- Sen. Hillary Clinton isn't just hinting around about issues in Sen. Barack Obama's record anymore or having her team talk up what they view as inconsistencies in his record (although they are still doing that, too).

Today, after mixing it up personally with Obama, D-Ill., and John Edwards at Saturday night's debate, Clinton, D-N.Y., delivered some of the punches herself.

In one section of her speech to a crowd of hundreds at Nashua North High School in Nashua, N.H., the senator rattled off a series of charges, rapid fire.

"You know, if you give a speech saying you're going to vote against the Patriot Act, and you don't, that's not change," she began, referring to a speech Sen. Obama once gave.

"If you say that you're going to prevent members of Congress from having lunch with lobbyists sitting down, but they can still have lunch standing up, that's not change."

The crowd cheered loudly.

But there was more. And this time the target was Edwards.

"If you say that you passed the Patients' Bill of Rights but you forget to add it never got signed into law, that's not change," she said, referring to a claim Edwards made during the debate.

Edwards adviser Jonathan Prince countered in the "spin room" after the debate by telling ABC News that the public should know the former North Carolina senator shouldn't be blamed for the Patients' Bill of Rights' failure to pass the House and be enacted into law -- because he was a member of the Senate at the time.

Edwards himself expressed outrage today at the Clinton campaign over another matter -- a Clinton aide's remarks about the way Edwards at campaign stops invokes the story of Natalie Sarkisyan, a California teenager whose family blames her death on an insurance company's failure to quickly authorize payment for a liver transplant.

"In order to be president, you need to do more than read articles about people who need help and talk about them," said Clinton aide Jay Carson. He added that Clinton is "somebody who's actually going to help people and not use them as talking points."

"My reaction is this campaign doesn't seem to have a conscience," Edwards said in Keene, N.H. "This is not about them, it's about families like the Sarkisyan, Lowe, Lakeys -- who desperately need a voice."

Clinton later rejected Edwards' claim that her campaign lacked a conscience.

"Oh, that's just totally untrue," she said. "You know, what I said is that he answered a question about what his biggest accomplishment was in the Senate by trying to mislead people that a bill he had worked on actually became law, and of course, it did not."