WASHINGTON - Republican congressional candidate Doug Ose made no secret of his campaign’s strategy heading into the final six-week run of the primary campaign: hit Republican opponent Tom McClintock hard – and often, he said in an hour-long interview Tuesday.

“We are going to be a broken record,” said Ose, who is seeking a return to the U.S. House after retiring from his 3rd District seat in 2005.

Seated in the gilded Peacock Alley of Washington’s famed Willard InterContinental Hotel with Richard Temple and Ray McNally, the veteran California Republican operatives who are working on his campaign for the District 4 seat of departing U.S. Rep. John Doolittle, Ose said he was prepared to forcefully contrast his record with that of McClintock.

The thrust of the approach, Ose and his advisers repeatedly stressed, was to paint McClintock, a two-term state Senator and former state Assemblyman, as a dirty and unethical lifetime politician. McClintock became well known in conservative circles and California politics after his failed bid for governor in the 2003 recall election. But Ose’s side suggests that McClintock’s familiarity can be pierced by showing voters what they say is the real Tom McClintock.

“They know of him, but they don’t know him,” Temple said.

And one prime target, Ose and his advisers said, was McClintock’s history of obtaining per diem housing allowances. In his last 12 years in the legislature McClintock has received more than $300,000 in tax-free reimbursements for transportation from Sacramento to a home he has with his mother in Thousand Oaks, though he represents Elk Grove, which is less than 50 miles from the capital.

“He’s the king of per diem,” McNally argued, with Ose jumping in with an animated cheerleader style saying, “He’s no. 1! He’s no. 1!”

“The guy’s ripping the system off,” Ose said. “Per diem is for you to reimburse your expenses for representing your constituents. It’s not for you to pay for your mommy’s house.”

The per diem charge plays into a larger argument Ose is trying to convey: that he’s an outsider while McClintock is a veteran of Sacramento.

More from PolitickerCA.com: McClintock says race against Ose is for ‘the heart and soul of the Republican Party’

Democrat Charlie Brown, who nearly defeated an embattled Doolittle for the Roseville-area seat in 2006 and is running again this cycle, may end up with plenty of fodder against whichever Republican wins the primary slug-fest between Ose and McClintock. But the Ose campaign is charging ahead.

Focusing on the kind of character-based personal issue that the per diem payments represent will work, McNally argued, because it’s something voters understand and violates their sense of what is fair. Temple argued out that in the 2002 race for state Controller, Dean Andal brought up the per diem payments issue against McClintock, a maneuver that, Temple said, cost McClintock votes in Sacramento, Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties.

“There is one set of circumstances that we would no longer advertise on television,” Ose said at one point in the interview, laughing. “That is, McClintock admits his felonious behavior, turns himself into the district attorney, cops a plea…”

And Ose, who said that he’s “so clean I squeak,” argues that if he doesn’t bring up the per diem issue against McClintock, Brown certainly will.

“Brown got as close as he did against John (Doolittle) in 2006 by saying, ‘I’m not John Doolittle,’” Ose said. “That was his campaign…If you run against Tom McClintock…the campaign would be: I’m clean, he’s not. I’m ethical, he’s not…”

“Think about the perception of voters to what it is that put this seat in jeopardy in the first place,” Ose added, referencing Doolittle, who is under federal investigation for ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “What you quickly come to is the behavior of a member of Congress. People have a certain, visceral reaction, negative in nature.”

Ose said that with his clean record, Brown could never make the argument stick in a general election matchup between the two.

In a twist, Ose’s own relationship with Doolittle was on display just hours later.

At a private reception for Ose at the Capitol Hill Club, where the former Congressman was feted by California Republican U.S. Reps. Darrell Issa, David Dreier, Dan Lungren and Doolittle.

Ose and Doolittle did a public toast for one another. “This is a man who has huge shoes for anyone to fill,” Ose said. “And I am going to try to fill them. And if I am half as successful as he is, I will consider my career to be a success.”

“You will be just fine filling those shoes and then some,” Doolittle said a few moments later. “I appreciate you, and I know you care about Northern California, and you have the experience, knowledge, and desire…to serve.”