TRENTON _ State Republican leaders gathered Thursday morning in a stuffy party headquarters adorned with an old campaign sign mocking Phil Murphy’s love for raising taxes.

So it was hardly a surprise that Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean and GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin took turns lambasting Democratic plans to raise taxes.

At the moment, there are two Democratic budgets – one proposed by Governor Murphy and one proposed by Democrats in the Legislature.

The salient point for Republicans is that both budgets would raise taxes.

Bramnick suggested Murphy’s “extreme” ideas were an attempt to gain favor with the party’s left wing in anticipation of a possible run for president or vice president. That’s an interesting notion to be sure.

But it’s hard objectively to consider Murphy’s tax proposals extreme. They include raising income taxes on millionaires and bumping the sales tax back to 7 cents on a dollar. It is now at 6.625 cents.

Keep in mind that Murphy did say in the campaign that he wanted a so-called millionaire’s tax and that he won easily.

But he did not say he wanted to raise the sales tax, which is something Hugin zeroed in on.

The GOP Senate hopeful noted that the governor has suggested people won’t even notice a small increase in the sales tax.  Hugin called that view insulting.

He said low-income people would be hurt by increasing the sales tax even if they don’t specifically notice it’s been raised.

The budget drafted by Democratic legislators doesn’t raise the sales or income tax, but it does increase the corporate business tax, which is now 9 percent, to a high of 13 percent.

Kean took direct aim at that, claiming the total increase would amount to around $7 billion.

Seven billion?

While Democrats say the tax would raise a mere $800 million, Kean was not dissuaded, contending that the Democrats’ bill is poorly drafted and that its true impact would be $7 billion.

Murphy, by the way, opposes raising the corporate tax.

The arching question here is, does it really matter what Republicans say about the state budget, at least from a practical point of view.

Democrats certainly have the political muscle to do whatever they want without help from the GOP.

Still, there are political points here for Republicans to make.

One is that Democrats always raise taxes.

The other is that Democrats are fighting among themselves and showing the public they have trouble governing.

Bramnick said it was very easy over the last eight years for the Dems to simply blame Chris Christie whenever something went wrong.

That’s no longer an option.