BOSTON – Mayor Giuliani spearheaded the Republican response to what he called the Democratic “makeover” convention yesterday, accusing the party of “running from” Senator Kerry’s Senate voting record and hiding behind criticism of President Bush.

Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said Republicans will trumpet the Bush record at next month’s convention in New York.

“We’re going to run on President Bush’s record; we’re not going to run away from it as they have been doing for the last four nights,” he said.

At a press conference with the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Edward Gillespie, Mr. Giuliani accused Democrats of avoiding discussion of Mr. Kerry’s votes. “This has been a convention in which everything and anything has been discussed but the record of these two men,” he said.

“The function of a political convention, you would think, would be to give the voters an idea of how the candidate might function as a president in office, making decisions on the great issues that affect our country, and I don’t think we’ve really seen that yet with respect to Senator Kerry in this convention,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Mr. Giuliani asserted that Democrats want to conceal from voters that they have nominated a senator who “has the single most liberal voting record – John Kerry, more liberal than Hillary Clinton, more liberal than Ted Kennedy – and a senator who has the fourth most liberal voting record, John Edwards,” he said.

“There is no question that if John Kerry were to be elected, and we certainly hope that isn’t the case, he will raise your taxes – because that’s his incarnation, that’s what he’s truly all about, regardless of what he says,” Mr. Giuliani said.

The Kerry campaign has stressed in response to similar criticism that the magazine that labeled Mr. Kerry the Senate’s most liberal member used incomplete votes and that the same analysis also showed Mr. Kerry to be more conservative on national security votes.

Mr. Giuliani repeated other stock Bush-Cheney attacks on Mr. Kerry, saying the senator should be “straightforward” about his votes against supplemental funding for the Iraq war, which he said qualified Mr. Kerry for the “far left-wing” of the Democratic Party.

He said all Americans should watch footage of Mr. Kerry saying he voted for the appropriation before he voted against it.

Mr. Kerry said he voted against the appropriation on principle because it did not include a reduction of part of the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers to help pay for the costs of Iraq reconstruction.

Mr. Giuliani accused Mr. Kerry of proposing to cut billions in funding for intelligence agencies and of missing the majority of public meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Kerry campaign has said the projects Mr. Kerry would have cut were pork, and that a similar bill was passed the same day on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. Giuliani, who led the city’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, defended President Bush for taking the “offensive” against terrorists. He called the president “a strong, principled leader who is going to stand up for what is needed when it is popular, and when it is unpopular.”

He brushed off the anti-Bush film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” “I haven’t seen it. I don’t really need Michael Moore to tell me about September 11,” he said.

His appearance was part of an organized Republican effort to respond to the Democrats’ convention speeches and week of nationwide publicity.

Mr. Gillespie continued to predict an 8- to 12-point public opinion poll “bounce” for the Democratic ticket on the heels of the convention.

In a memo sent to reporters, Mr. Gillespie and the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Marc Racicot, said Mr. Kerry’s strategy is to reach back 35 years and focus on his service in Vietnam while “fast forwarding” through a Senate career that spanned two decades.

The Republican response team in Boston also showcased a former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, who battled Mr. Kerry in his 1996 Senate race.

In a back-handed compliment to Mr. Kerry, Mr. Weld said Mr. Bush faces an “uphill fight” in televised debates.

Mr. Kerry “is an international grandmaster at the art changing the subject, on very short notice and when you are on live television and you get a question that’s trying to pin you down on a position where you don’t want to be pinned down, like, did you vote to increase taxes on social security? Did you vote to award welfare to drug addicts?” he said.

Mr. Weld advised the president, “You’ve got to change the subject real fast. And there is nobody better at that than Senator Kerry. He’s got the speed of a welterweight. He’ll move all around. The president could feel at the end of the debate that he has been shadowboxing, if he’s trying to land solid blows on Senator Kerry.”

Mr. Giuliani rejected suggestions that Republicans are also attempting to remake the image of their party by showcasing moderate Republicans such as Governor Schwarzenegger of California.

“Do we have diversity in our party? Yes. Are we going to present that diversity? Of course we are,” he said. But he said the party will not shrink form the Bush record.

Mr. Giuliani conceded that New York City is heavily Democratic.

“The city of New York, I think, voted against Abraham Lincoln twice. So you might get a sense of the uphill battle we are talking about,” he said.

But he added that had not stopped the city from electing two successive Republican mayors.

“There is a fighting chance in New York….I think the convention will help that,” he said.