Opinion: John McCain keeps his eye on a Democratic target

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Here’s something unusual, at least of late -- a Republican (in this case, John McCain) attacking a Democrat (Hillary Clinton).

With the bare-knuckles brawling between the Clinton and fellow Democrat Barack Obama presidential campaigns garnering so much attention, McCain today provided a useful reminder that at some point, each party will close ranks (to greater or lesser degrees) and their nominees will train their sights on each other.

McCain himself is likely to revert to intra-party trash-talking at tonight’s debate in Florida among the GOP presidential hopefuls (a 90-minute affair that starts at 6 p.m. PST on MSNBC). But at a lunchtime town hall session in West Palm Beach, he focused on Clinton, accusing her at least four times of waving “the white flag of surrender” in Iraq.

The Times’ Maeve Reston was there, and she reports that ...

McCain pounced on a comment the New York senator made Monday about the U.S. deployment in Iraq. ‘I’m looking to bring our troops home, starting within 60 days of my becoming president,’ Clinton said, a remark largely lost in the coverage of the harsh exchanges between her and Obama (as well as the continuing controversy over Bill Clinton pressing the attack against his wife’s rival).

“Incredibly, Sen. Clinton decided that she wants to surrender,” McCain said, his voice rising. “She wants to raise the white flag. She wants to set a date of immediate withdrawal from Iraq after we’ve been winning, after the service and sacrifice of so many brave young Americans.”

“…We are succeeding and she is committed to setting a date for withdrawal. My friends, I will not let that happen,” he said.

It is the topic McCain feels most passionately about -- and that he is most comfortable holding forth on -- and the crowd responded to him with applause.

As security conditions have improved in Iraq, so have McCain’s political prospects. Still, with Florida’s GOP primary looking more and more like a crucial faceoff between McCain and Mitt Romney, the Arizona senator has to have some concern that the issues mix has changed so dramatically.

Especially in the last few weeks, the economy has muscled out Iraq as the subject of greatest concern to most voters. And with Romney’s background as a businessman, that would seem to work more to his advantage than McCain’s.

-- Don Frederick