The Trail

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

SNUBBING BUSH IN 2000?

McCain Denies Vote Claim

John McCain denied a report posted late yesterday on the Huffington Post Web site that he did not vote for George W. Bush for president in 2000.

After sitting on the story for nearly eight years, Arianna Huffington said in an interview yesterday that McCain told her soon after the 2000 election that he did not vote for Bush.

"It's not true, and I ask you to please consider the source," responded Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain.

The conversation took place at a Los Angeles dinner party, Huffington said, and the senator's wife, Cindy, said she did not vote for Bush, either. The liberal blogger said McCain's declaration came after a tirade in which he criticized Bush's tactics against him in their battle for the Republican nomination.

"He never told me it was off the record," Huffington said in the interview. "It shows how far this man has fallen -- that he could not even bring himself to vote for Bush and now he has embraced him."

Huffington said she went public to counter "the media's love affair" with McCain.

-- Howard Kurtz and Juliet Eilperin

GAS TAX DEBATE

Economists Answer Back to Clinton

Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she'll have no truck with economists telling her where to put her gas-tax holiday.

Yesterday, more than 230 replied, issuing a signed letter opposing proposals by Clinton and John McCain to suspend the 18-cent federal tax this summer.

"First, research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers," they wrote. "Second, it would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation. Third, a tax holiday would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed."

Signatories include four Nobel laureates and a number of members of President Bill Clinton's administration.

-- Jonathan Weisman

LINKING DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES

GOP's Take 2 on Anti-Obama Ads

The Republican Party doubled down on its campaign to link Democratic candidates for the House to Barack Obama, despite the Saturday loss by a GOP candidate who used similar tactics in a Louisiana district held by Republicans since 1975.

The latest anti-Obama ad comes from Mississippi, where Republican Greg Davis is trying to win a May 13 special election for a House seat held by the GOP for 13 years. The ad accuses Democrat Travis Childers of wrongly denying Obama's endorsement of him. "Travis Childers, taking Obama's endorsement is wrong; lying about it is worse," the narrator says.

Democrats pointed to Don Cazayoux's win in the Louisiana special election as evidence of the limits of an anti-Obama message. Republicans looked at the closeness of Saturday's race as a sign that the anti-Obama effort paid dividends.

-- Paul Kane