McCain seeks to portray Obama as an extreme liberal
The Republican's home-stretch campaign strategy is focusing on the idea of Obama as a socialist. Meanwhile, some Democrats feel Obama leans too much to the center.
Reporting from Washington — Heading into the home stretch of the presidential campaign, John McCain has been sharpening his closing argument against his Democratic opponent, saying that Barack Obama's tax policies would produce a redistribution of wealth that borders on socialism.
That message has pervaded recent campaign events, including what McCain called a "Joe the Plumber" tour of Florida on Thursday, as the Arizona Republican has tried to portray Obama as an extreme liberal who would soak job-creating businesses and wealthier Americans in order to dole out money to those too poor to pay taxes.
The renewed effort to depict Obama as a liberal marks a departure from McCain's earlier efforts to paint the Illinois senator as too inexperienced for the Oval Office, but it draws on a familiar Republican tradition of describing opponents as outside the mainstream.
In 2004, President Bush accused Democrat John F. Kerry of residing on the "far left bank" of the mainstream. The Democrats' 1988 nominee, Michael Dukakis, was disparaged by the GOP as a Massachusetts liberal and a "card-carrying member of the ACLU."
This year, Republicans are drawing on an independent analysis of Obama's voting record that identified him as the most liberal member of the Senate in 2007. Obama has been endorsed by Americans for Democratic Action, a bastion of liberalism. He was an early opponent of the war in Iraq and supports new government efforts to expand healthcare coverage.
But the liberal label obscures subtleties in Obama's record and campaign message: He has tacked to the center on issues such as the death penalty and government wiretapping. He has a mixed record on trade policy. His campaign fliers promise, "Barack Obama won't take away your guns."
Indeed, some liberal Democrats have been impatient with his forays to the center. "There are plenty of people on the left who are disappointed with what they see as a timidity in his policy prescriptions," said Jim Jordan, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Kerry's.
One area where Obama's policies have been straightforwardly liberal is taxation.
For individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $250,000, Obama would raise the top tax rates on income and capital gains by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire.
He also has suggested raising the Social Security payroll tax on those upper-income people.
