GOP Senator Ties His Campaign to Senator Obama

Another GOP senator with something good to say about Senator Obama.


"Just a month ago, Republican strategists were trying to closely link Democratic House candidates to Sen. Barack Obama, convinced that in certain parts of the country Obama would drag candidates from his own party down to defeat.

This week, a Republican senator, Gordon Smith of Oregon, offered a much different assessment of Obama's coattail effect: He included words of praise from Obama as part of an ad promoting his own reelection.

"We just saw it as an excellent way to highlight Senator Smith's ability to work across the aisle, even with the Democratic nominee for the White House," said Smith campaign spokeswoman Lindsay Gilbride.

The outbreak of enthusiasm is a striking shift from the spring, when Republican advertisements from North Carolina to Mississippi to Illinois ominously painted Obama as an out-of-touch liberal bringing his brand of politics to regions of the country that should shun it.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain said the GOP will stick to that script this fall "on a district-by-district basis." But a senior Republican strategist involved in House races said that strategy is now largely dead, "except in rare instances, and I'm not sure it was a good idea in the first place."

The tactic initially caused some Democrats to distance themselves from the senator from Illinois, but now most are eager to be as closely associated with his campaign as possible."

- rest at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062503067_pf.html

 

So is Zell Miller a Republican actling like portraying himself as a Democrat????