Rep. Frank: Obama not ready to ‘re-fight’ ‘90s battles

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), speaking on behalf of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), “misunderstands” the nature of partisan politics.

Frank said Obama’s repeated talk of bringing the two parties together shows a naivete about how fierce Republican opposition can be.

{mosads}“If you try to be too conciliatory with that faction, you’re going to be in big trouble,” Frank said on a conference call Friday arranged by the Clinton campaign.

Frank said he will campaign “very enthusiastically for any of the three candidates,” but he repeated several times that Obama does not seem to understand the political realties of Washington’s partisan battles.

“I don’t understand how we don’t re-fight the battles of the ‘90s,” Frank said. “We re-fight them or we give up to a very entrenched [Republican faction].”

Frank was joined on the call by other members of Congress supporting Clinton along with campaign aides to the New York Senator.

The purpose of the call, according to a release, was to refute attacks from Obama, but most of the call was spent repeating criticism of Obama’s praise of the former President Ronald Reagan and the GOP as a party of ideas. The two campaign have clashed this week over Obama’s comments, with Clinton suggesting in an advertisement — pulled after one day — that Obama backed specific policies advocated by Republicans. Obama has called that a distortion, noting that he did not take a position on any specific GOP policies in his initial comments describing Republicans as a party of ideas.

Despite the criticism, Clinton’s senior strategist and pollster Mark Penn said both campaigns are seeking a “different tone,” and it’s “a good sign that both campaigns took down their negative ads.”

Frank and others on the call said they supported Clinton’s move to ask her delegates to support the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida.

“I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan,” Clinton said in a statement Friday.

Campaign aides said Clinton is “hearing from a lot of people who would like their voices heard,” but she will continue to honor a pledge not to campaign in Florida. Clinton and other candidates pledged not to campaign in Florida and Michigan after those states were penalized by the Democratic National Committee for moving up their primaries.

Frank and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) said Clinton was smart to move to seat those delegates for fear of ceding two crucial battleground states before the general election has even begun.

“The notion that [Democrats] should piss off the people in Florida and Michigan is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard,” Frank said.

Clinton won the Michigan primary as the only major candidate on the ballot. Polls show she is heavily favored to win Florida’s primary next week despite the fact that none of the candidates have campaigned there.