The McCain campaign shifted into attack mode today, with pit bull Sarah Palin telling a crowd of Colorado backers that Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists.”
The swipe, a reference to Obama’s controversial connections to 1960s Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, were part of what Republican campaign consultants admit is a sharper, more aggressive message. With Election Day only a month away, both campaigns also unveiled new television attack ads.
“One of [Obama’s] earliest supporters is a man who was a domestic terrorist,’ Palin said at a rally outside of Denver.
“[Obama] is not a man who sees America as you and I do – as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,” she told the applauding crowd.
With the latest polls showing Obama gaining ground in battleground states, McCain advisers say the Republican has to go on the offensive, and will question Obama’s character, “liberal” record and “too risky” proposals.
McCain’s camp has already readied a new ad, “Tax Cutter,” that calls Obama “not truthful on taxes.”
Obama’s team today launched an orchestrated assault on the Republican’s health-care plan – releasing four new TV ads and a barrage of mailers that skewer McCain’s proposal as the largest middle-class tax hike in history.
At a rally in Newport News, Va., Obama told cheering crowds that McCain’s plan was a “radical” one that would tax health-care benefits for the first time ever.
“Millions [will] lose the health care they have; millions pay more for the health care they get; drug and insurance companies continue to profit; and middle-class families watch the system they rely on begin to unravel before their eyes,” Obama said.
A spokesman for Obama called Palin’s remarks on 1960s radical Bill Ayers “offensive,” but hardly unexpected “given the McCain campaign’s statement that they would be launching attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills.”
At least one independent political group has jumped into the fray with an anti-abortion and anti-Obama ad.
The Committee for Truth in Politics, a conservative organization from North Carolina, released an ad showing a cooing baby while a woman’s voice asks, “Senator Obama, why did you vote against protecting infants that survived late-term abortions?”
gotis@nypost.com