Obama blasts Sarah Palin and her old dog Cain

Obama blasts White House rivals' 'change' pitch

2 hours ago

FLINT, Michigan (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama savaged his White House opponents John McCain and Sarah Palin Monday as hypocrites who were trying to hoodwink US voters with a late conversion to the mantra of change.

With polls suggesting the White House race is now deadlocked or turning to McCain's favor, Obama hurled some of his sharpest language yet in attacking both the Arizona senator and the Republican's new running mate from Alaska.

At a meeting with workers here in the heartland of Michigan's distressed auto industry, the Illinois senator said he himself had been running as the change candidate for 19 months.

"And I guess it must be working, because all of a sudden John McCain's saying 'I'm for change too'," Obama said as Palin's entry to the Republican ticket shakes up the hard-fought race for the November 4 election.

"And when John McCain with a straight face says 'I'm going to change things,' at the same time as he says he's agreed with (President) George Bush 90 percent of the time, you know it's pretty hard to believe."

Obama mocked the McCain-Palin platform in summary: "Except for economic policy, tax policy, healthcare policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington."

The Democrat noted that the Republicans were airing a new ad that bills themselves as "original mavericks" who had fought vested interests and, in Governor Palin's case, an infamous "bridge to nowhere" project in Alaska.

But Obama observed the former mayor had supported the bridge before it sparked an outcry as an example of wasteful "pork-barrel" spending, and then had hired a Washington lobbyist to extract federal money for her small town.

"You can't just make stuff up, you can't just reinvent yourself," he said.

"The American people aren't stupid. What they're looking for is someone who's been consistently calling for change" on Iraq, tax cuts, making college costs affordable, on healthcare and ethics reform.

"That's change you can believe in, that's why I'm running for president," Obama said to loud applause.