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You can't support Bush, then bash him, Barack Obama tells John McCain

BY CELESTE KATZ
DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Saturday, October 25th 2008, 8:44 PM

John McCain's dumping on President Bush's economic record is like
"Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger," Barack Obama scoffed Saturday.

Obama roared back onto the campaign trail Saturday after visiting his
ill grandmother, mercilessly mocking McCain's ties to Bush.

"He said that I was like George W. Bush. You can't make this stuff up,
folks," Obama told 10,000 people at a Nevada rally.
SEE: MORE REPUBLICANS DEFECTING TO ENDORSE OBAMA

"In what may be the strangest twist of all, Sen. McCain said that I
would somehow continue the Bush economic policies - and that he, John
McCain, would change them," he scoffed.

McCain last week scrambled away from the unpopular Republican
President, bashing Bush for allowing things to "get completely out of
hand."

Obama pounced: "John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand
economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his
go-it-alone foreign policy."

Obama invoked Bush's name 20 times, lashing McCain to the President's
policies.
SEE: MCCAIN TURNS ATTACKS AGAINST BUSH

McCain, stumping in nearby New Mexico, likewise jumped on a line from
his opponent's campaign: Veep pick Joe Biden's assertion that Obama
would be tested by an international "crisis" early in his
administration.

"I have been tested," McCain said at the state fairground in
Albuquerque. "I'm gonna test them. They're not gonna test me." He also
channeled Joe the Plumber to hammer Obama on taxes.

McCain, despite sagging national poll numbers and a dwindling campaign
war chest, vowed to fight to the finish line - and get there first.

"We're a few points down, and the pundits, of course, as they have
four or five times, have written us off," he said. "We've got them
just where we want them. We like being the underdog."

McCain is being grossly outspent by Obama on the airwaves. Obama spent
$80 million on ad buys in the first two weeks of October - almost as
much as the $84 million McCain has had to run his general election
campaign.

"Don't let Barack Obama buy New Mexico," he pleaded with backers.

Swimming in campaign cash, Obama went up Saturday with a new
two-minute TV spot - a veritable eternity by political advertising
standards - on his plan to turn the economy around.

In "Defining Moment," which is geared at key battleground states,
Obama doesn't take on McCain by name, but speaks of the need to "end
the mindless partisanship ... the divisiveness."

Speaking directly to the camera, Obama says he'll institute a
middle-class tax cut, eliminate wasteful government programs and stop
America's $10 billion a month spending in Iraq.

Obama will get another boost Wednesday when he campaigns for the first
time with ex-President Bill Clinton in Orlando. 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/10/25/2008-10-25_you_cant_support_bush_then_bash_him_bara-3.html