Inside Politics

Rudy’s analysis

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani thinks he knows why Sen. John F. Kerry made no mention of Israel in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination last week.

“It’s a case of trying to be all things to all people,” Mr. Giuliani told the New York Post. Earlier this year, Mr. Kerry told an Arab-American group that Israel’s border fence is “a barrier to peace,” but he later told Jewish groups that it was legitimate self-defense, Mr. Giuliani noted.

“When you speak on national TV, when you’re talking to both, you can’t say anything, because you can’t have it both ways. … I have no real assurance of where Kerry is going to be on Israel,” the Republican ex-mayor said.

Mr. Giuliani added: “The contrast is that if President Bush is your friend, he’s your friend — and he’s not going to say one thing to [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and another to the Arabs.”

Hastert’s goal

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert says he hopes to replace the income tax with a national sales tax or a value-added tax, Matt Drudge writes at www.drudgereport.com.

“People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans,” the Illinois Republican says in his new book, to be released tomorrow.

“Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad,” Mr. Hastert writes in “Speaker: Lessons From Forty Years in Coaching And Politics.”

“If you own property, stock, or, say, 100 acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don’t want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. …

“By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next 15 years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore.”

Democrat for Bush

The mayor of St. Paul, Minn., broke Democratic Party ranks to announce his support for President Bush’s re-election.

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