Pelosi: Clinton Camp Played Gender Card

Even a fellow Democrat, who happens to be the first female House Speaker, doesn't think much of Hillary's whining. Everyone is now seeing right through Ms.Clinton. Nice try:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, R-Calif., said Monday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., hasn't been treated differently because she's the only woman in the presidential race, but added that her campaign appears to have been trying to exploit that perception in the wake of last week's Democratic debate.

Pelosi, the nation's first female House speaker, told ABCNEWS.com in an interview that she didn't agree with observers who thought Clinton was drawing particular heat because she's a woman.

[...]"I think the campaign is trying to take advantage of another -- probably people who didn't even watch the debate, to say, 'Oh, they were really rude,' or something like that, and that has some salience," said Pelosi[...]

The criticism of Hillary isn't limited to her playing the gender card. Her overall campaign strategy on the whole has come into question:

[...]by avoiding questions on important issues - from Social Security overhaul to driver's licenses for illegal immigrants - Clinton risks playing into a narrative her rivals are eager to establish: that she is slippery, evasive and overly political.

"Whether it's accurate or not, people have this sense that she has an 'ends justify means' approach to being accurate and consistent," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Iowa's Drake University. "That's her vulnerability, and it's where Edwards and Obama will go nuclear eventually."

Then there is the question of Billary's pro-neocon foreign policy views:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Monday accused rival Hillary Rodham Clinton of a two-faced foreign policy and argued that she is failing to do enough to stop what he called President Bush's march to war with Iran.

"Senator Clinton is voting like a hawk in Washington, and talking like a dove in Iowa and New Hampshire," Edwards told hundreds of people gathered at the University of Iowa, where he offered his ideas on dealing with Iran.

[...]He has said that by her vote, she and other lawmakers are allowing Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to "rattle the sabers" of war, and giving them the excuse they need to attack Iran, just as they attacked Iraq.

"The war in Iraq isn't even history yet, but the Bush Administration is repeating the march to war with Iran, and they're getting help from people who should know a lot better," Edwards said. "George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neocon warmongers used 9/11 to start a war with Iraq and now they're trying to use Iraq to start a war with Iran. And we have to stop them."

It is these tactics that would explain the first meaningful drop in her poll numbers:

The attacks may be working. The CNN/Opinion Research polls suggests that Clinton's support has slipped from its height one month ago.

"Clinton's strength is about where it was throughout the summer, indicating that she has lost the support she gained last month but that Obama has not yet cut into her core constituency," CNN political director Keating Holland said.

Clinton is the top choice of 44 percent of the likely Democratic voters interviewed for the poll. Her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, was the top choice of 25 percent, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has 14 percent.