Earlier this week Hillary! Clinton horned in on Opie Edwards’ crypto-Marxian turf with a speech so economically “populist” that it would have made Uncle Hugo exclaim, “Whoa, espere un minuto, Muslos del Trueno del Senador”.

Prudently recognizing the need to take public attention off his “I support Roe v. Wade/I’ll appoint judges in the mold of Roberts and Alito” conundrum, “America’s Mayor” wasted no time in returning fire:

“This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase,” Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California’s Silicon Valley. “She wants to go back to the 1990s. … It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.”…

” Mrs. Clinton, when she was in San Francisco a few years ago, was quoted as saying about the tax cuts, ‘We’re going to have to take more from you to give it to the common good,’” he said. “My philosophy is to give you a little more back for the common good.”

Just as at the last GOP debate, when everybody on that stage wanted to get the first swing at Ron Paul, it’s Rudy who beats them to the punch.

Of course, being the quickest isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.  The downside of that coin is that a candidate can blunder into campaign-killing gaffes that way (e.g. ex-Senator George Allen’s “macaca” remark), as Dean Barnett points out.  But with Fred Thompson’s official entrance into the race a fait accompli, with all the negative implications therein for Giuliani’s chances at the nomination, the latter can’t afford to sit on his honorary “front-runner” laurels.  To his credit, he’s not letting complacency be to his presidential aspirations what arrogance was to John McCain’s.

Parenthetically, did anybody else notice this turn of phrase in Ms. Rodham’s address:

It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an “on your own” society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a “we’re all in it together” society.

Ripping off Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan, I see.  Geez, can’t libs EVER come up with ANYTHING original?

Well, I guess whenever they do, it quickly becomes a lampooned cliché (”Putting people first”, “It takes a village”).  Still, if there’s such a thing as political blasphemy, this would be a good, er, candidate for it.

(h/t: Powerline)