McCain Don’t Likey Romney

It seems that John McCain has decided to attack Mitt Romney relentlessly:

The contrast could hardly be more striking. Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney have been mixing it up on the trail with increasing intensity ever since their feisty exchange at the last Republican debate. This week their arguments over immigration prompted Mr. McCain to suggest acidly that Mr. Romney’s solution might be “to get out his small-varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn.”

Standing on the sidelines, safely out of the line of small-varmint-gun fire, has been Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican who is still leading in most national polls.

If Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney have been skirmishing, Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani have something between a nonaggression pact and a mutual admiration society going. When they both appeared at a fund-raiser last week in New York, Mr. McCain praised Mr. Giuliani’s debate performance, and Mr. Giuliani went so far as to say of Mr. McCain that “if it weren’t for another candidate, I might actually be supporting him.”

It is an unusual dynamic, to have the candidates placing second and third in most national opinion polls engaging one another fiercely, while allowing the front-runner a wide berth. But campaign officials and outside political consultants said that Mr. McCain’s willingness to engage Mr. Romney directly appeared to stem from a combination of tactical, political and, to a lesser extent, personal considerations.

Tactically, Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney are in direct competition because they have both invested enormous resources to compete in the early nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Mr. Giuliani, though, seems to be leaning toward competing more heavily in the more populous states, including California and New York, holding their primaries on Feb. 5. Several state-by-state polls have shown Mr. Romney gaining ground — even holding leads, in some — in Iowa and New Hampshire.

So McCain has decided that he has to attack Romney time and time again. His goal: to make Romney look like a flip-flopper.

Romney, however, isn’t about to let McCain get away with his personal attacks. When McCain made a comment about Romney’s, umh, hunting experiences, Romney reacted: “I have respect for Senator McCain, and I guess it just shows that even when he’s wrong, he’s amusing.”

Ouch.

Giuliani obviously feels good: he’s left alone. Thusfar, none of the other candidates have truly launched an attack against him. It seems to me that attacks against Giuliani will come, but rather late: if McCain beats Romney and decides to take on Giuliani, Romney has already weakened McCain so much that he really isn’t a formidable opponent anymore. Same goes for Romney of course.