GOP Front-Runners Rev Up the Tax Cut Talk

With key contests in New Hampshire and Iowa less than two weeks away, the two leading Republican presidential candidates stepped up their battle Friday over tax cuts.

They also worked to shore up turnout at the polls, with Texas Gov. George W. Bush buttonholing supporters in Iowa and Sen. John McCain of Arizona focusing on young adults in New Hampshire.

In his strongest terms to date, Bush said McCain’s $240-billion tax cut plan simply doesn’t do enough for taxpayers. He also likened McCain to his potential Democratic opponents.

“It’s an interesting development in the debate that when I laid out a realistic tax cut where everybody gets a tax break, that the two vocal critics of my plan are Al Gore and John McCain,” Bush said at the Des Moines airport. Later, while adding that McCain is a “good Republican,” he said McCain’s plan “is the best to maintain the status quo in Washington, D.C.”

Bush’s campaign supplemented the rhetoric by unleashing a new ad in Iowa, where he is seeking to blunt both McCain and fellow GOP candidate Steve Forbes, who has been highly critical of Bush’s record on taxes.

Without mentioning either challenger by name, the ad says Bush’s opponents are “wrong” to attack his plan to use the federal budget surplus to fund a $483-billion tax cut over five years.

McCain, who has touted his tax plan as more fiscally conservative during appearances this week in New Hampshire, aired a new ad of his own Friday. The ad, running only in the Granite State, says McCain’s more modest plan “won’t take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax breaks that benefit the wealthy.” The ad emphasizes that McCain’s tax cut is smaller because he devotes more of the federal surplus to shoring up Social Security.

Unwilling to give McCain even a day’s leeway, the Bush campaign retaliated by unleashing a New Hampshire ad late Friday that contends the Texas governor is “on the side of the taxpayers in this debate.”

“You mark my words: You leave money sitting around the table in Washington, Washington politicians will spend it,” Bush declares in the ad, in a none-too-subtle jab at McCain.

Bush has increasingly emphasized the debate over taxes--traditionally a voter-rich issue in New Hampshire--as the state’s Feb. 1 primary has neared. While some polls show McCain leading the race in New Hampshire by a healthy 9 percentage points, others indicate the gap has narrowed or even disappeared.

But before that primary, Bush must finish strongly in Iowa. To that end, he focused Friday on getting his supporters to show up for the caucuses.

And as a sign that he is trying to dampen expectations, Bush on Friday said he feels he will be successful in Iowa if he takes in 37% of the vote. That would match the percentage won by former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas in 1988, the biggest win ever for a contested Republican race. Polls routinely show Bush collecting more than 40% of the vote.

Unlike a primary, caucus voting is a lengthy, complex affair in which candidates’ supporters gather to discuss the issues before making a final decision, a process that can take upward of three hours.

During a march through the town square of Glenwood, a Bedford Falls look-alike tucked in southwestern Iowa, Bush repeatedly focused on getting out the vote as he shook hands, signed autographs and briefly took control of a supermarket checkout microphone.

Smiling at a surprised checker at Kaimans grocery store--Winston cartons on sale for $24.29 and green 4-H ribbons on the wall--Bush took the mike and spoke over the store’s intercom system. “Now hear this,” he said. “Everybody should attend their caucus, and when you’re there, remember George W. Bush came to ask for your vote.”

Meanwhile, McCain in New Hampshire went to work on the youth vote, speaking to about 2,000 young people gathered in Manchester on Friday for College Convention 2000.

The three-day meeting of high school and college students from around the country was intended to encourage young people to become involved in democracy. The privately sponsored event featured visits from Republican candidates Alan Keyes and Forbes, as well as McCain. Democrat Bill Bradley canceled abruptly.

Involving young people in government was a recurring theme for McCain as he wrapped up a week filled with town meetings, an address to the New Hampshire state Legislature and a major tax policy speech.

New Hampshire’s electorate takes its first-in-the-nation primary seriously, and in more than 90 town meetings here McCain has faced tough, intelligent questions on topics that ranged from highly personal to cosmic and abstract. He repeatedly defended his tax cut plan as more prudent and fair than Bush’s plan.

“I think there’s different economic proposals for different times,” McCain said at one stop. “Now’s the time to pay up for the spending we had to make in bad times.”