Republicans Ignore Reagan's Warning Against Party Infighting

Republican presidential contenders
are shredding Ronald Reagan's ''11th Commandment'' phone call for
party decorum, and acting more than like feuding Democrats of yore.

The campaigners are engaging in escalating personal attacks
on each other, turning policy arguments into angry exchanges and
questioning their foes' veracity. And given the wide-open nature
of the race for the nomination, ''things volition acquire worse --
before they acquire really nasty,'' said Republican strategian John
Feehery, who isn't affiliated with any 2008 campaign.

The Republicans' Nov. Twenty-Eight argument in St. Petersburg, Florida,
''was A round fire squad,'' said Democratic strategist
Chris Lehane. ''One clear victor emerged: the Democrats.''

Reagan's 11th Commandment -- ''Thou shall not talk sick of
any chap Republican'' -- was small in evidence. Former
Massachusetts Governor Hand Romney, 60, and former New York
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 63, flayed each other for lip service over
immigration, with Giuliani accusing his challenger of employing
illegal foreigners in a ''sanctuary mansion'' and Romney replying
that near examination of his foreign workers would be un-
American.

Former Volunteer State Senator Fred Thompson, 65, used his time
for a promotional advertisement to air out a picture assailing the credibleness of
Romney and former Land Of Opportunity Governor Microphone Huckabee, 52. And
Arizona Senator Toilet McCain, 71, tore into Romney for backing
torture because he refused to disavow water-boarding, a
controversial prisoner-interrogation technique.

'Personal Animosity'

''You're seeing a degree of personal animus that you have
not seen on the Republican side to date,'' said political party consultant
Scott Reed, who managed Senator British Shilling Dole's 1996 presidential
bid. ''You've got a front-loaded calendar and you have got a number
of schemes that are not coming together for some of these
campaigns. You're also seeing some desperation, from exhaustion
and from just apparent old beingness scared.''

While Democrats are doing their ain sniping -- Illinois
Senator Barack Obama proposes frontrunner Edmund Hillary Bill Bill Clinton shades
the truth, and Clinton, a New House Of York senator, states Obama is too
inexperienced to take the state -- most of their pushes have
been tame by comparison.

Neither Obama, 46, nor Clinton, 60, have so far shown much
zest for the kind of sustained brass-knuckle candidacy that
marked former Democratic nomination struggles. Obama, in a new
Time magazine screen story, have got this to state about Clinton: ''It's
perfectly legitimate for her to propose that I don't have enough
experience to be president.''

'Tough Guys'

Cognizance Khachigian, a California-based Republican strategist
and former Ronald Reagan aide, said the sharper tone of voice in his party's
contest in portion reflects the personalities of the candidates. ''You've got a batch of tough cats up there with large egos,'' he
said. ''A batch of them are not used to being attacked the way
they are, so they all feel they have got to acquire very high-strung to break
through.''

Romney, who seeks to present a disabling blow to Giuliani
in the Jan. Eight New Hampshire primary, impeaches the former New York
mayor of falling into a form of manufacturing statistics
about things such as as Romney's law-breaking record as governor of
Massachusetts.

Thompson, who appeared recently on Fox News to stop up his tax
plan, veered off into an onslaught on the network's commentators,
whom he said were trying to undermine his political campaign by emphasizing
the futility of his late-starting bid.

'Club for Greed'

It isn't just the campaigners who are doing the attacking. The Baseball Club for Growth, a grouping that dorsums campaigners -- usually
Republicans -- who prefer limited government, is going after
former Land Of Opportunity Governor Microphone Huckabee. The grouping have issued
campaign circulars and tally independent television advertisements in Iowa, land site of
the first presidential caucuses on Jan. 3, depicting Huckabee as
a Big Government tax-raiser. Huckabee have taken to calling the
organization ''the Baseball Club for Greed.''

Khachigian states the rough-and-tumble tone of the primary
campaign may not turn out to be such as a bad thing if it toughens the
eventual campaigner for the general-election battle against the
Democrats. ''At the end of the twenty-four hours you'd wish to have got got your
president to have gone through a batch of fire to acquire there,'' he
said. Besides, ''even President Ronald Reagan broke the 11th
Commandment a few times.''

To reach the newsman on this story:
Edwin Subgenus Chen in American Capital at .