Republican Party strategist Karl Rove has backtracked on his statement that Hillary Clinton may have sustained brain damage when she fell at home and hit her head in 2012.

Rove's statement, made last week at a conference in Los Angeles, drew harsh reactions from Democrats who accused him of politicizing Mrs. Clinton's health and feeding the issue into media to hurt the latter's bid for the presidency in 2016.

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Rove clarified that he never used the term "brain damage" but said "traumatic brain injury", and insisted that Mrs. Clinton's health score is a legitimate issue that she must honestly address if she were to run for president.

The Clinton team's reaction to Rove was initially curt but later evolved into a lengthy expression of anger, with spokesman Nick Merrill calling Rove's tirade "sick" and a "desperate attack" that gave away the Grand Old Party's fears over a potential Hillary candidacy.

Yet even some Republicans think that Rove went too far with the "brain damage" attack, and expressed concern that it might backfire against them by portraying Clinton as a victim of a political dirty trick.

Democrat Tom Daschle, a former senator, thinks that Rove's attack on Mrs. Clinton will not do the Republicans any good as it might be viewed as a sexist attack on the first-ever female US presidential candidate, if Clinton does get nominated during the primaries.

The issue on Mrs. Clinton's "brain injury" stemmed from a fall in 2012 where doctors said she suffered a concussion just when she was supposed to appear before a congressional inquiry on the Benghazi attacks.  

As Secretary of State at the time, Mrs. Clinton's testimony was being sought to shed light on how the State Department allegedly mishandled security information, which led to the September 2012 deadly attacks on diplomatic posts in Benghazi, Libya that killed the American Ambassador and three other Americans.

Clinton's doctors had already debunked Rove's assumptions on Mrs. Clinton's health even before he aired them. 

Before she was released from hospital in January 2013, physicians reported that the blood clot Clinton sustained during her fall did not result to a stroke, and she did not have any brain damage.

Rove had already been accused of utilizing smear campaigns in the past, including the 1994 judicial campaign in Alabama where Rove's team was said to be behind a political demolition job that accused the opposition candidate of being involved in pedophilia.

Hillary Clinton has not announced any plans for 2016 but political observers think she may be dropping a hint when she told an Arizona audience in March that she was very much concerned about the country's future.

TagsHillary Clinton, Karl Rove, US Presidential Election, Democrats, Republican Party