Ad wars on taxes, lobbyists

With both candidates off the campaign trail today, the presidential campaigns are up with new ads aimed at exploiting possible vulnerabilities in the other candidate.

Republican John McCain unveiled a TV ad to air in battleground states that hits Democratic rival Barack Obama on taxes.

"Celebrity? Yes. Ready to lead? No," the announcer says. "Obama's new taxes could break your family budget."

The ad features newspaper headlines criticizing Obama's tax proposals, which call for cuts for the middle class but for letting the Bush administration tax cuts lapse for those making more than $250,000 a year, and images of families.

"The press warns the 'taxman cometh,' the announcer says. "Obama's taxes mean 'higher prices at the pump.' Obama's taxes a 'recipe for economic disaster.' Higher taxes. Higher gas prices. Economic disaster. That's the real Obama."

Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan responded to McCain's ad, "This ad is just more of the same old false and discredited attacks that Senator McCain knows aren’t true. Senator McCain will say or do anything to hide the truth: while Obama will cut taxes for the middle class, McCain will give a billion dollars in new tax breaks to America’s eight largest corporations, while his plan provides no direct relief for more than 100 million American families."

UPDATE: The Obama campaign also just released a "fact-check" video that features Brian Dees, its deputy director of economic policy, doing a point-by-point rebuttal of McCain's ad.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has a web ad that tries to knock down McCain's credentials as a reformer by linking him to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The ad says that McCain is so desperate to raise money so he can launch more negative attacks on Obama that he is getting help from a strategist with ties to Abramoff, whom McCain once helped investigate.

Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, is soliciting donors to attend a Monday fund-raiser in Atlanta for McCain and the Republican National Committee. In 2006, a House investigative committee concluded that Reed interceded with the Bush White House to help some of Abramoff's clients. Abramoff was sent to prison on conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion charges.

"More of the same old politics," the announcer concludes.

"John McCain's willingness to raise tainted money from tainted Republicans like Ralph Reed shows he still doesn't understand that calling yourself a reformer doesn't make you one," DNC Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement issued with the ad. "Each new report sheds new light on McCain's willingness to fuel his campaign by cozying up to key figures in the Republican culture of corruption. Despite all of his rhetoric about reform, the truth is John McCain simply cannot be trusted to bring change to Washington politics."

The DNC also set up a conference call with Congressman Henry Waxman of California, who led an investigation into Abramoff.

"John McCain's decision to raise money from one of the key figures in the Jack Abramoff scandal - one of Abramoff's conspirators in a money laundering scheme - is a very disappointing example of John McCain abandoning his principles on the campaign trail. He claimed to be a reformer? Well, reformer no more," Waxman said.

Obama's campaign is also airing TV ads attacking McCain tailored for each key state.

In Ohio, for instance, it is airing an ad questioning the role of McCain and his campaign manager in a merger that could cost a small town more than 8,000 jobs because DHL will close a shipping hub.

“It’s tough times,” Ed Rutherford of Morrow, Ohio, says in the ad. “When it’s a foreign entity, coming in and sucker punching us. That’s how this felt.”

The McCain campaign responded to the Ohio ad by citing a Factcheck.org report that says the ad, and a similar one from the AFL-CIO, "go too far."

"Some statements about McCain are misleading and some of the inferences the ads invite are unsubstantiated," the analysis says.

And the McCain campaign just responded with a TV of its own in Ohio to rebut Obama's.

"Maybe the applause has gone to his head," the announcer says, as footage appears on screen of Obama speaking to an adoring crowd.

"Saying John McCain cost Ohio jobs, though it's just not true," the announcer says, as snippets of Obama's ad appear. "It's Obama's taxes that will hurt Ohio families. Higher taxes on your paycheck, your life savings, your electric bills. His taxes are a 'recipe for economic disaster.' That's the real Obama. Ready to tax. Not ready to lead."