Rudy Drills In On Taxes

So says the Giuliani policy shop in an escalation of their campaign to drive a clean contrast with Sen. John McCain.

Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, responded:

Rudy Giuliani has a record of opposing tax relief. He actually endorsed liberal Democrat Mario Cuomo for governor because he opposed George Pataki’s tax cut plans, which Giuliani said at the time were too large. He also left Mayor Bloomberg with a fiscal mess, including a budget deficit of over $2 billion. That’s not fiscal responsibility.

It's hard to figure out, in an era of deficit spending and earmarks, what a fiscal conservative actually is. To the extent that John McCain opposed the first Bush tax cut and expressed mildly populist reasons for doing so, that's kind of a strike against him for those who want absolute purity on the issue. Rudy Giuliani's record is no less opaque, though, and in politics, it's not very easy to create a contrast where none really exists.

Contemplating this fight at a different level, Giuliani's playing bean-bag politics, and McCain is playing with dodgeball. Doesn't his argument right now -- I'm ready to be president -- render any specific attacks against him fairly harmless. Taxes didn't work as an argument against Mitt Romney; they haven't really hurt McCain elsewhere. Indeed, the only state where McCain's argument played against him was in Michigan, where Mitt Romney's burst of optimism trumped McCain's sociopolitical realism.