The American Spectator

p> RHODES SHOW br> Newly minted Democrat and presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark showed up in Washington at the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel on Sunday for the Oxford University Society of Washington, D.C.’s party for Rhodes Scholars. /p>

The reception he received was muted, but Clark took to the dais anyway and in a hoarse voice stumped for his own campaign. Clark was under orders from his Clintonista handlers not to make a full stump speech at the D.C. gathering, particularly since he’s due to make a major speech today in New York. “We didn’t want him giving the D.C. media types in attendance at the Oxford thing any insight into what was going to be said in New York,” says a Clark hand in Little Rock.

But Clark sources say that speech in New York will be nothing more than an updated speech on the so-called “New Patriotism” that Clark made in Little Rock and at the Citadel in September. “It will be full of specifics,” the Clark staffer said.

Clark spent little more than an hour at the Oxford event, enough time for one of his aides to ask organizers for a mailing list of all members, no doubt for fundraising purposes.

p> BLUE DASCHLE br> The Republicans don’t have a candidate to seriously challenge him, but Sen. Tom Daschle remains a concern among Democratic Party officials, who say their leader in the Senate is showing increasing signs of not having his heart in a campaign. /p>