McCain, Romney jab back and forth
Standing on the sidelines, safely out of the line of small-varmint gunfire, has been Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican who is still leading in most national polls.
If McCain and Romney have been skirmishing, McCain and Giuliani have something between a nonaggression pact and a mutual admiration society going. When they both appeared at a fund-raiser in New York last week, McCain praised Giuliani's debate performance, and Giuliani went so far as to say of McCain that "if it weren't for another candidate, I might actually be supporting him."
It is an unusual dynamic, to have the candidates placing second and third in most national opinion polls engaging one another fiercely, while allowing the front-runner a wide berth. But campaign officials and outside political consultants said that McCain's willingness to directly engage Romney appeared to stem from a combination of tactical, political, and, to a lesser extent, personal considerations.
That, some consultants said, could make McCain more likely to criticize Romney by name in an effort to stem his progress.
"I think it's a New Hampshire strategy, more than anything else," said Edward J. Rollins, a Republican consultant.
On top of that, Romney and McCain are competing for conservative support. To some extent, that base of voters is up for grabs this year because of Giuliani's current support of abortion rights, Romney's former support of abortion rights and the distrust with which many conservative groups view McCain because of his sponsorship of campaign finance legislation and his initial opposition to President Bush's tax cuts.
In recent days McCain's role in drafting the immigration proposal has galvanized many conservatives who fiercely oppose it, creating an opening for Romney.
The issue prompted the first big Romney-McCain skirmish, at the May 15 debate in South Carolina. Romney referred to an old immigration proposal that McCain supported with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., not a name that engenders love among many Republican primary voters.
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