JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (CAP) - In what is being seen in political circles as a desperate attempt to close the gap in the day before the election, the McCain/Palin Campaign has scrounged up all the remaining loose change it could from bottle returns and under the sofabed for a final ad blitz attacking Barack Obama in the one way it hopes will still resonate with American voters.
That he's black.
The ad called "Are you sure about this? Really?" encourages voters to take a long look in the mirror on election day, then take a look at a picture at Obama, and consider what's different about the two images.
"We're just saying," said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker 'Out Of' Bounds, "we don't want all these good, red-blooded, hard-working, sunscreen-wearing, Pro-Americans to wake up on Nov. 5 and wonder what happened to their country."
The ad begins with an ominous pan shot down the streets of Chicago's South Side, past the Trinity Church with images of a ranting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and bomb-throwing William Ayers CGI'd into the landscape, and leads into stark narration:
"The first 43 presidents in the history of this great country all had one thing in common. They did not look like Barack Obama. With all turmoil nationally and abroad in these scary, scary times, can we really risk bucking the trend that made this country so great?"
Another portion of the ad was equally inflammatory:
"The White House has become one of the enduring symbols of this country's greatness. But what would we call the presidential residence if Barack Obama is elected on Nov. 4?"
Though the Democtratic National Committee and NAACP decried the ad, and MSNBC anchor Keith Olberman urinated himself in anger, the McCain/Palin forces advanced the assault with a set of talking points to surrogates. Among them was that an Obama Administration would replace the White House Rose Garden with Black-Eyed Susans, and would replace the traditional "Hail to the Chief" music played at a presidential introduction to "Hot Tub" by James Brown.
"Or maybe 'Superfreak' by Rick James, or perhaps 'The Theme from Shaft' by Isaac Hayes. Can we, as Pro-American Americans really take that chance?"
Conservative talk show hosts were quick to embrace the new attack lines, with Rush Limbaugh re-igniting his assault on Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama two weeks ago.
"It was all about race. It was all about race!" he bellowed into his microphone for two hours interrupted during today's broadcast.
Limbaugh went on to say that Powell only endorsed Obama after learning that the retired general's first choice - Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb - wasn't running. As usual, a gleeful Palin took the chance to go vicious too far during a campaign stop in Ohio today.
"I don't know if the good people of Ohio know this because I know you good people don't watch all those fancy news programs all the time," she said, "but Barack Obama is black."
"How black is he?" her sheet-adorned crowd excitedly asked.
"You betcha I'll tellya. Barack Obama is soooo black that when Todd and his buddies get up at 4am to go snowmobile riding and moose hunting, and they don't want any of that cream or milk in their coffee, they order it Barack-style."
A new PEW Research poll shows that 99.3 percent of Americans actually do know Barack Obama is black, and 52 percent of them plan to vote for him anyway.
- CAP News Staff