Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) pushed back against the suggestion that the more personal tone of the presidential campaign has hurt John McCain, saying that personal attacks have come from both sides.
“I think there’s a tendency on the media to blame it more on John — John McCain and Sarah Palin than on Barack Obama or his campaign, but to me it’s — you know, it’s been coming from both sides,” Giuliani said on CBS Tuesday.
Giuliani said that it’s a “good thing” that attacks have subsided, but he equated Democratic attacks to ones made by Republicans on Obama.
“I mean, I don’t want to mention names, but there were some pretty horrible attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin just this weekend by very prominent Democrats very close to Barack Obama,” he said.
And, you know, there have been some on our side too.”
Last weekend, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said that attacks by McCain and Gov. Palin (R-Alaska) on Obama were “sowing the seeds of hatred.” Lewis, an Obama backer, also said that the attacks reminded him of the presidential campaign of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who ran as an independent supporting segregation in 1968. Obama’s campaign said it disagreed with Lewis’s comparison.
Giuliani, also on Monday, sought to portray McCain as the better candidate on the economy.
“He’s not going to raise taxes,” Giuliani said. “He’s not going to cut off — he’s not going to cut off trade with high tariffs the way Barack Obama wants to do. Barack Obama is talking about the kinds of things Herbert Hoover did. And I know people see him as change, but this is like retrogression.”