Naples, FL — Rudy Giuliani takes a shot at John McCain and Mitt Romney (albeit subtle) for their lack of support for a national catastrophe fund he argues will lower insurance rates in a web-only ad the campaign released Wednesday.

“Some say we don’t need a national catastrophe fund. That FEMA can handle disasters,” the ad begins, referring to comments McCain made this week without directly using his name. Moving onto Romney, the ad continues, “others say they haven’t looked at it yet and want to sit down with insurance companies first.”

Giuliani has made his support for the fund one of his key talking points in the Florida, where voters in the hurricane prone state are coping with increasingly high insurance rates. The campaign’s state chairman, Bill McCollum, called McCain “out of touch” with FL voters this week for his opposition to the fund, but Giuliani has been reluctant to criticize his rivals directly, instead reaffirming that he is the “only” supporter.
The ad concludes: “Only one Republican candidate has proven experience dealing with disaster. Only one will fight for a national catastrophe fund. And only one has a plan to lower rates and fix the insurance mess. Tested in crisis. Ready to lead. Rudy Giuliani. The only one for Florida.”

Palm Beach Gardens, FL — Rudy Giuliani punted today when asked to backup criticism his campaign surrogates have leveled against his rivals, including John McCain.

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In recent days, his national and state officials including his state chair, Bill McCollum, have equated McCain with Democrats and said he is “out of touch” with Florida voters because of his opposition to a National Catastrophic Fund. But Giuliani declined to back up McCollum today and continues to go easy on his friend McCain, noting that he doesn’t believe “Republicans should be attacking each other.”

We will be tuning in for Thursday night’s GOP debate to see whether Giuliani is finally willing to directly engage him.

But no such reticence today on the part of Mitt Romney, who attacked McCain’s economic credibility in a Palm Beach Post interview. “What’s his record by the way? What’s McCain’s record of job growth? What’s he done? Has he been involved in jobs at all in the private sector? In a state? In a city? I think you have to have a record before you criticize someone else’s,” Romney said.

UPDATE—Why won’t Rudy throw a punch? Marc Ambinder counts the reasons…

And Tony Fabrizio observes:

There’s the tactical consideration — what Fabrizio called the “pool table” problem posed by a multi-candidate race — that criticizing, say, McCain would help Giuliani, but also help Romney. That’s because some of the voters Giuliani pulls from McCain could go to him, but a big portion could also go to Romney. “They are in a very difficult situation,” he said of the Giuliani campaign. “I don’t think it’s a clear shot for him to figure out who to go after.”

West Palm Beach, FL — With one week to go before the Florida primary the Giuliani campaign is beginning to take aim at who they believe is its biggest threat, John McCain.

Giuliani said Monday he is going to get “quite sharp on policy differences,” but is still playing clean for the most part as he vows to draw contrasts “in a respectful way.”

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Thus far, he personally has only pointed to McCain’s votes against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but has left the contrasts there thus far. Critics say Giuliani will have to ratchet up the rhetoric if he hopes to take the AZ senator down–noting that Romney already tried to critique McCain’s tax record in New Hampshire and it failed to resonate with voters.

But several surrogates and aides he sent out today did take it up a level, calling McCain “out of touch” and equating him with Democrats…..

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