GOP strategists: Attack Obama hard

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By Donald Lambro

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama slug it out again tonight at a showdown debate in the Arizona senator's favored town-hall setting, which gives him his best chance to jump-start his sputtering campaign at a critical moment in the presidential election.

Fearing Mr. McCain is fast running out of time to structurally change the election's strategic political focus, Republican strategists say that his only hope now is to make his rival's judgment, inexperience, liberalism and tax increases the central issues in the campaign's remaining weeks.

They say the antidote to Mr. Obama's poll-driving lead on the economy is to attack him much more aggressively on his desire to take more tax money from people's pockets.

"Obama's tax-and-redistribute policies will not resurrect jobs, wages or the price of stocks in American retirement accounts," said University of Maryland economist Peter Morici, who has been critical of the economic plans both candidates have proposed. "In fact, Obama's policies may make economic conditions worse."

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Many experts say Mr. Obama's "redistributionist" tax policies would raise the 35 percent top income-tax rate to 39.6 percent, increase the 15 percent capital gains and dividend tax rates to between 20 percent and 28 percent, impose higher taxes on corporations, and increase the Social Security payroll tax on upper-income Americans.