The controversy over suspending the state sales tax on gasoline is certainly reinforcing the old adage about politics making strange bedfellows. How about Jill Long Thompson with John McCain and Mitch Daniels with Barack Obama? Yesterday, Long Thompson repeated her call to suspend the 7% sales tax on gasoline, while Daniels appeared to back off from a statement he made in mid-May about it being something worth “taking a look at sometime.” The Governor wasn’t available for comment, and both his Statehouse press secretary and campaign spokesperson said that “nothing had changed” that would lead him to pursue the idea at any time in the immediate future.

This puts Long Thompson squarely in line with McCain, who has advocated a holiday for the federal fuel excise tax, and puts Daniels on the same page with Obama, who calls the idea an election year “gimmick” that wouldn’t provide any real help for drivers. Long Thompson was quick to disclaim any philosophical alliance with McCain, saying his idea involved the excise tax, which is used to build roads, and hers involves the sales tax, which goes into the state’s general coffers for, among other things, property tax relief.

But the real key here is not where the tax money goes, but how much relief a suspension would provide to taxpayers. And the federal excise tax of about 18 cents and the state sales tax, from 20 to 28 cents a gallon, would provide approximately the same amount of savings. So Long Thompson and McCain are a lot closer on this issue that she wants to admit. So are Daniels and Obama, and I don’t think the Governor is all that unhappy when that is pointed out.

That’s because Daniels and Obama share the same key word that’s central to both campaigns….Change, with a capital C. Democrats love it when Obama talks about change, but they have fought virtually every change Daniels has tried to implement for three and a half years. In a year when everything the Democratic presidential candidate touches seems to turn to gold, Daniels doesn’t mind one bit when people make the connection. In fact, he smiled and said he noted the irony of all this when I asked him about this philosophical confluence a few weeks ago.

If the key to the Democratic campaign in Indiana in 2008 is that change is good when it’s Obama saying it, but change is bad when it’s Daniels, they’re unlikely to win both, or either, races.