Obama On Palin: Lipstick On A Pig

Well, the common complaint of Hillary Clinton's supporters that Sen. Barack Obama is a sexist pig came through loud and clear today. Playing on Gov. Sarah Palin's hockey mom description of herself as a pitbull with lipstick, Sen. Obama referred to her as a pig with lipstick at an appearance in Lebanon, Virginia today to the cheers of the invitation-only partisan crowd. An angry reaction from McCain was met with a denial from Obama's campaign, which says Obama was actually talking about McCain and not Palin. Sen. Joe Biden added insult to injury by telling a reporter today that Sarah Palin's election as the nation's first female vice president would actually be a setback for women!

Throughout this year's primary battle with Clinton, Obama repeatedly made offensive, sexist comments about Clinton which were barely noticed by the mainstream media. Whenever Clinton challenged Obama, he would make a comment like "she's taking out the claws", "when she's feeling down periodically she launched attacks on me", or she was simply "throwing China" at him. Obama once gestured brushing Clinton off his shoulders to a cheering audience. Similarly, Obama has gone out of his way to make derisive comments in reference to McCain's age, such as "he's losing his bearings" or his "half century of service to his country."

Despite the perception the media portrays of Obama of being a fresh face for change, he is the dirtiest campaigner you will find. Playing hardball Chicago politics, he was able to win his first state senate race unopposed by unleashing a team of lawyers to challenge the nominating petitions of all of his opponents and get them thrown off the ballot on technicalities. It is actually common for African-American candidates in Chicago to file flawed nominating petitions because of the large number of valid signatures of registered voters residing in a district a candidate is required to obtain in order to make it in on the ballot, but it is very rare for one black candidate to systematically remove all of his black opponents from the ballot, including a prominent South Side reform politician like Alice Palmer, like Obama did. He destroyed both his primary and general election opponents in his U.S. Senate race by digging up dirt from their sealed divorce records and peddling them to the Chicago Tribune where his campaign guru David Axelrod was formerly employed. He boasts of his big Senate win four years ago in Illinois, but the fact is that he won by default because of the dirt he was successful in getting the Chicago media to play up to destroy his opponents.

Obama and his campaign can protest all they want, but I'm convinced the "pig with a lipstick" comment was aimed at Palin. Despite his claim that his campaign is not involved in the smears against Palin, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. The Democrats have dispatched a team of 30 lawyers and opposition research operatives to Alaska to dig up dirt to destroy Palin. Obama's campaign is in a complete panic because all the new polling data suggests there has been a major shift in the support of white women voters away from Obama and towards McCain, who now leads this group by double-digit margins. If the Obama campaign thinks they're going to win this race by running against Palin and trying to paint her as an extremist, religious zealot who doesn't know what the hell she's doing, they're making a big mistake. Their efforts are only further rallying the religious right behind McCain and solidifying the Republican ticket's support among white female voters and values voters.