IOWA INSIDER

Barack Obama went back on the offensive against Hillary Clinton today in Iowa.

The report from the Lee Enterprises Des Moines Bureau reporter Dan Gearino:

ADEL — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama escalated his skirmish with Hillary Clinton on Friday, mocking Clinton’s claim thatshe has the experience to deal with the most difficult foreign policy
issues.

“So often in Washington, experience means doing what you’ve been doing over and over and over again. Well, to me that’s not experience if what you’ve been doing isn’t working. It’s bad judgment,” Obama said, against the backdrop of a cornfield.

“If you want to show good judgment, then you’ve got to be open to changing the way we do things in order to get different outcomes,” he said.

Obama has spent the week in a verbal scuffle with Clinton. It started Monday during a debate when Obama said he would meet with leaders of governments hostile to the United States, such as Iran and Syria, in his first year in office.

Clinton rejected the idea. The next day she said Obama was “naïve” and “irresponsible” to want to hold such meetings without preconditions.

The campaigns have gone back and forth on the topic ever since.

Obama chose to keep the issue alive Friday. He spent about two minutes talking about it during a 14-minute speech in Adel.

A top GOP state party official might have little free time on his hands these days, but he’s still finding time to grind out a novel about the Iowa caucuses.

Republican Party of Iowa Executive Director Chuck Laudner’s book “Stand and Deliver” is set to debut next week. Laudner’s book seeks to pull the curtain back on the caucus campaigns for fellow political junkies.

The book, set in Iowa, opens at the Ames straw poll and follows the campaigns through caucus night. But readers looking for intrigue for thinly-veiled descriptions of the current crop of candidates in the vein of “Primary Colors” will be disappointed.

“It’s basically campaign related,” Laudner said. “It’s a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes and the decision-making process and the mistakes that are made.”

Laudner worked on Steve Forbes’ 2000 caucus campaign, but insists he wasn’t writing about specific politicians.

“The candidates, the main characters are jumbled up and not anybody in particular,” Laudner said.

Laudner started the book in 2005, and finished it in close to six months. He admits he was able to find the time because he doesn’t sleep very often.

“Two or 3 in the morning in these hotel rooms, you know, (I) pull it out, write a few pages,” he said.

He’s selling it for $25 as a fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Iowa at www.iowagop.org.

Democrat John Edwards hit back hard today at GOP counterpart Mitt Romney, who ridiculed Edwards’ plan for tax relief for the middle class while campaigning in Iowa Thursday.

Edwards sent this statement out via his campaign:

“Every time another radical Republican running for president speaks, the American people are reminded of how out of touch with economic reality they are. Example A: Mitt Romney.

Romney, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, should be ashamed for attacking my economic plan, but it’s not surprising he is. I want to rewrite our tax code to make it fair and help hard-working Americans save some money to give them a better shot at the American Dream. Mitt wants to make sure that the wealthiest Americans just keep getting wealthier and let everyone else pick up the scraps. Mitt’s all about more, more, more for the people who already have the most – and that’s just wrong.

The truth is Mitt Romney shouldn’t pay lower taxes on the money he makes from his money than middle-class families pay on the money they make from hard work. Neither should I. We’re both incredibly fortunate and we should pay our fair share.

That’s the big difference between people like Mitt Romney and me. Mitt Romney thinks he and his insider friends helped make America great, I think it’s the hundreds of millions of Americans in the working class and middle class who make America great. It’s these hard-working families who deserve a break and a chance to live the same American Dream as I have. That’s what I’m fighting for, and that’s what people like Mitt Romney have spent a lifetime fighting against.”

Can somebody remind these guys they’re not running against each other right now?