Barack Obama ripped into John McCain and Sarah Palin as never before on Monday, accusing his Republican White House foes of ”shameless” dishonesty with their claim to be ”mavericks” ready to shake up Washington.
McCain and Palin were ”lying about their records”, the Obama campaign said after the Republican running mates advertised themselves in a television spot as the ”original mavericks” who would stand up for hard-pressed voters.
Some of the White House race’s most savage exchanges yet came as polls showed the contenders deadlocked or McCain pulling into a post-convention lead after he electrified the Republican base — and appeared to confound the Obama campaign — by adding Alaska Governor Palin to his ticket.
”I’ve got to admit, these folks are shameless,” Obama told a rally, displaying a passion and an intensity rarely seen from the Illinois senator.
He noted that Palin had originally supported an infamous ”Bridge to Nowhere” project in Alaska, and had hired a Washington lobbyist to secure millions of dollars in federal funding for the small town of which she was mayor.
”When John McCain gets up there with Sarah Palin and says ‘we’re for change’ … you’ve got to ask yourselves, what are they talking about, how do they have the nerve to say it?” the Democrat asked.
”It’s empty words. You’re just saying it because you realise, gosh, Obama’s been talking about change and it seems to be working, so maybe we should say it too,” he added to mocking laughter from a crowd of 1Â 500.
A senior McCain advisory said the response from Obama was to be expected.
”We don’t expect the Obama campaign to take this lying down,” Mark Salter told reporters on McCain’s campaign plane.
”We’re very confident that we’ve been able to use his vice-presidential pick and the Republican convention to remind voters that John McCain’s whole public career has been about change.”
‘The American people aren’t stupid’
While other polls have Obama ahead in all-important battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado, his campaign has clearly decided it is time to take off the gloves against McCain and, in particular, Palin.
”You can’t just make stuff up, you can’t just reinvent yourself,” he said earlier in Flint, Michigan, in response to Palin’s boast that she had intervened to kill the federally funded bridge.
”The American people aren’t stupid.”
An ad by the Obama campaign featured a photo of Palin wearing a T-shirt extolling the scrapped bridge, which would have connected a handful of Alaskans to an airport at vast expense, and highlighted McCain’s lock-step voting record with President George Bush.
”Politicians lying about their records? You don’t call that maverick — you call it more of the same,” the announcer said, breaching one of the last taboos of US politics by accusing the Republicans of outright dishonesty.
With polls showing four-fifths of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track, the ”change” mantle has emerged as a central motif of the election campaign and one that McCain is claiming for himself despite his Republican Party’s widespread unpopularity.
The tactic appears to be working. A USA Today/Gallup survey showed McCain ahead by 50% to 46% among registered voters, a turnaround from one week ago when, just after the Democratic convention, Obama had a seven-point lead.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents said the choice of Palin had made them more likely to vote for McCain, while 21% said they were now less likely to back the Republicans.
Polls by CNN, Rasmussen and the Washington Post had McCain essentially tied with Obama, after the Arizona senator trailed by as much as nine points last week.
”We’re going to work for you and we’re going to drain the swamp in Washington, DC,” McCain told a rally in Lee’s Summit, Missouri after his campaign aired its ”original mavericks” broadcast.
”We’ll take them on and we’ll defeat ’em because America knows it’s time for change and it’s time for the right change.”
McCain praised Palin’s history of fighting corruption in her own party and pork-barrel spending while governor of Alaska, and touted his own reputation of bucking the party line.
”I will veto every pork barrel earmark spending Bill that comes across my desk. We will stop it, my friends, because it breeds corruption and we can no longer stand for that,” the Arizona senator said. — AFP
