"Finally off the ropes after battling claims of racial insensitivity, Sen. George Allen is on the offensive in his close re-election battle using a tested and usually successful GOP issue: taxes.

But with voters troubled over the war in Iraq and President Bush's popularity low because of it, Democrats see Allen's tax ,attack on challenger Jim Webb as a flimsy diversionary tactic.

Allen on Friday began airing his second statewide television ad blasting Webb, a former Reagan Republican, as a liberal Democrat bent on raising taxes, including the so-called marriage penalty, and cutting the $1,000-per.-household child tax credit in half. The ad will cost Allen about $750,000.

'Taxes is always an important issue in Virginia. Taxes, at the end of the day, is what defines you to the electorate: are you a big-spending, high-tax liberal or are you mindful of tax dollars and spend them as if they were your own,' said Republican strategist Christopher J. LaCivita, a long time Allen adviser.

Webb, who has decried tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that Bush proposed and a GOP-run Congress enacted, said he wants to preserve the cut in the marriage penalty tax and opposes a reduction of the child tax credit. He supports raising the threshold for paying the estate tax to $5 million as a way to protect small business and farms.

'This is typical Republican playbook stuff. Whenever they get backed into a corner, it's always 'tax-and-spend liberal,' Webb campaign spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd said.

Allen began hitting Webb on the issue a week ago and repeatedly raised the claims Monday in their final televised debate before the Nov. 7 election.

The two Allen ads are intended to appeal to middle class, suburban voters, particularly in fast-growing northern Virginia. The ads also energize the antitax GOP activists who were important soldiers in Allen's statewide victories in 1993 and 2000.

Six years ago, Allen unseated incumbent Democrat Chuck Robb, and the tax issue figured prominently. Allen was particularly adept in denouncing the levy imposed posthumously on the estates of the wealthy." (Associated Press, October 14, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html