Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, returning to her red-state ties, chastised Democrats Saturday for taking on issues that arouse conservatives and turn out Republican voters rather than finding consensus on mainstream subjects. Without mentioning specific subjects like gay marriage, Mrs. Clinton said: “We do things that are controversial. We do things that try to inflame their base.” “We are wasting time,” the senator told a group of Democratic women here, on part of a two-day swing through a state that could provide an alternate hub to New York if she starts a national political campaign. On recent weekends, Mrs. Clinton has been traveling the country and raising money at an extraordinary pace. But the trip to Arkansas this weekend had a more sentimental feel, reuniting Mrs. Clinton with her former political allies and giving her a platform to broadcast her more centrist background.
After speaking to the Arkansas Federation of Democratic Women, Mrs. Clinton was scheduled to visit the first home in Fayetteville that her husband bought for her, and where they were married. But she made the trip solo: Former President Bill Clinton has been in Africa, visiting projects run by the Clinton Foundation. Mrs. Clinton said her husband had called her to report that he had learned on his trip that the American ambassador to Malawi was from Arkansas, part of what she jokingly referred to as the “Arkansas diaspora.”