Rudy Giuliani gave a long interview with RCP's good friend Larry Kudlow, which aired yesterday on CNBC.

The interview was primarily on economic and war issues. Social-issue voters won't learn much, but Giuliani's answers on economic policy will impress conservative and Republican voters.

I have been saying for some time now that there is a real opportunity on the Republican side for a candidate to fill the Steve Forbes-kind of role in the GOP field with an unapologetic embrace of low-tax, pro-growth, supply-side policies.

McCain's past votes against the Bush tax cuts and his recent scuffle with the Club for Growth make him now unlikely to fill this vacuum.

With Kudlow's prodding, Giuliani seemed to willingly embrace the supply-side mantle.

KUDLOW: In your book, "Leadership," you talk several times about the benefits of a free economy. You talk about capitalism. I want to ask you, do you regard yourself as a free market capitalist? Do you regard yourself as a supply sider?

GIULIANI: I regard myself as a supply sider for sure. I mean, watched Ronald Reagan do it and learned it, so it works. Taxes get reduced, more revenue come in. Practiced it as the mayor of New York. I'm the first mayor ever to do that. It's almost harder to do in New York than it is in Washington. There was less of an acceptance for it and more resistance to it. But I have lowered taxes 22, 23 times. I started with a $2.3 billion deficit and by lowering taxes, we cleared that deficit and we started building a pretty big surplus.

So not only do I believe in it, I've made it work. So I believe in it really strongly because it comes out of practical experience. Free market, more and more so. I've said over the last 10 to 15 years I've become more and more convinced that globalization, free market economics is the way to go for the United States. It really just challenges us to kind of predict the future and to try to think of the industries we have to create where we can take advantage of the large number of consumers that are emerging in China, the large number of consumers that are emerging in India. If we challenge ourselves, it really gives us the hope of real growth and that's what we should be pointing toward, growth.

On taxes, jobs and growth:

KUDLOW: Speaking of tax hikes, some in Congress are talking about taxing these private equity funds, which many believe have made business more efficient. They want to tax the so-called carried interest. Do you have a thought on that?

GIULIANI: I first would intuitively say, no well studied or deeply knowledgeable would be I'm against most taxes. I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes. I mean, think about it, I made 23 different taxes. And I'm not sure I made all of them. I mean, the city shouldn't have 23 taxes or 30 taxes or 40 taxes. There should be a few. They should be simple. They should be easy to comply with. They should raise the revenue that's most for the essential services of government and they should be competitive. Whenever the people talk about a new tax, I generally don't like the idea.

I think [the U.S. tax code] needs a massive simplification. If we were doing income tax for the first time. In other words, if we were starting off new back at the beginning of the last century, then probably we should go with a--we probably should've gone with a flat tax, maybe two levels of tax, but really simple. Our economy has kind of grown up now on depreciation and deductions and industries have grown up around that and so I don't know exactly how much you can simplify it, but you sure have to make a stab at it.

I think Reagan got it right. I felt that what Reagan did was, I kind of think of it as like cleaning out the forest. You got--the tax code was this big, he got it down to a simple code, reduced the top rates. Kind of leveled out the rates a little so there weren't as many. The tax code needs a simplification in addition to lowering your sum taxes. Another tax that has to be dealt with is the death tax. That's a double tax. People get it twice and it has a major impact on lots of people who aren't really wealthy. You know, people who have their money in land or they have they money in real estate or they have they have their money in the family business or the family farm and they've got to sell the darn thing or they get in a big dispute with the IRS about what it's worth on paper.

KUDLOW: John Edwards, former Senator John Edwards has talked about raising taxes on the rich in order to create universal health coverage. Your thought on the Edwards plan.

GIULIANI: That's how you--that's how you decelerate the economy. I mean, it's exactly the way in which you take the growth that we're having and put a lid on it and start to move it back in the other direction. The reality is that the more ways that we can find to put money back into the private economy, the more our economy grows because that money gets used in a dynamic way. It gets used to create jobs. I used to be a big advocate of lowering the sales tax in New York, or even doing away with it because right around New York we have states that don't have a sales tax. We lose an incredible amount of business to those--to those states. If we did away with the sales tax in New York, it would be a jobs program for New York. The scales would have to go higher, 10 percent more employees, 20 percent more employees, 30 percent more employees. We'd make back a lot of that tax through the income tax, but we would also, more importantly have a growing economy. And that's--the government has to constantly be thinking about. What can we do to grow the economy.

These are exactly the kind of answers conservatives and Republicans want to hear from their presidential nominee. If Rudy continues to pound these themes and follows through with bold proposals to push the country further in the pro-growth, low-tax, pro-free markets direction, it will be a powerful selling point in his attempt to close the deal with Republican primary voters.

And if he does win the nomination, it will in all likelihood set up a strong contrast with the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election, as the Democrats are clearly moving toward a more populist, anti-free trade, more progressive (i.e. higher taxes) economic approach.