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Opinion: Hillary at the Mike

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As The Times’ Stephen Braun notes after covering Hillary Clinton’s prime campaign event today in New Hampshire, it’s no longer enough for a presidential contender to have mastered the art of strolling down the state’s many Main Streets and making small talk with prospective supporters. In the 21st century, you’ve got to make your bones as a talk-show host.

Braun reports that Clinton wielded her cordless mike with Oprah-esque skill as, at Dartmouth University in Hanover, N.H., she led a town hall meeting on stem cell research. Much of the focus was on the continuing battle between Congress and the White House over restrictions on federal funding of the research.

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Last week, the House passed a bill to lift the strings on funding that President Bush imposed early in his first term. The Senate previously approved it, but Bush, as he did with a similar measure last year, is expected to veto it.

There’s virtually no chance of the House overriding the veto with a two-thirds majority, but it’s within the realm of possibility in the Senate --- which presumably would further highlight the disagreement between Bush and many lawmakers, including Republicans, on the issue. And Democrats long have seen the dispute as a winner, politically, for them, as was evident from Clinton’s remarks today.

‘It’s time to ... put an end to the backwards and restrictive policies of this administration,’ she told about 400 people at the forum. ‘Our scientists have been set back years in the race for life-saving cures because they’ve been held back by a narrow ideology that rejects sound science.’

Bush, of course, sees it differently, arguing that the legislation pending before him would wrongly spend taxpayer money on the destruction of human embryos. Several of the 2008 Republican presidential candidates have embraced his position.

Clinton, though, sought at the Dartmouth event to draw attention to the GOP divide in the debate. According to Braun, she gently nudged several panel members --- who admitted shyly that they were registered Republicans --- into opening up about the infirmities they hope could be aided by stem cell research that was accelerated by federal dollars.

-- Don Frederick

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