With last weeks' attack-tics leaving the Straight Talk Express wheezing in the electoral slow lane as voters abandon them for a candidate that is actually talking about issues like the festering wound that is our economy, McCain-Palin are trying to jump start their campaign with some reliably Republican fuel: abortion. Did you know Obama is for it? Gosh, it's almost like they're trying to hold voters hostage to a party with just one issue. But apparently, if you can't win on the war, the economy, health care, foreign policy, taxes, colloquialisms or winks, you can certainly remind voters that a vote for a guy they agree with on every other issue means they're going to hell. But can it work?

In a Pennsylvania rally this weekend, Sarah Palin told voters explicitly:

In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that.

According to Slate's Melinda Henneberger, only about 13 percent of people in this country vote on pro-life issues alone — and even plenty of conservative women who have in the past are abandoning the GOP ticket this year.

But Palin wasn't done trying to remind voters that Obama supports reproductive rights — as about 60 percent of Americans do at the moment. According to Time, she also spent the weekend bringing up the long-debunked infanticide rumors, pleading with them to get outraged about that rather than her ticket's lack of a coherent economic strategy or their waffling on issuing a new tax cut plan (they've decided against it, by the way — apparently, tax cuts for corporations and CEOs are good enough cookies for them). Even the Family Research Council is getting in on the act with an Obama abortion ad — but at least theirs is, you know, actually accurate about Obama's record. It says something that the reporting on their attack ad notes that, for once, a Republican attack ad about abortion is true.

But, on the other hand, these are the same people that are trying to ban abortion in South Dakota, declare a fetus a citizen on Colorado and have passed a law intended to guilt women out of having abortions in Oklahoma by making them undergo unnecessary medical procedures. A little lie here and there never hurt anyone the GOP cared about anyway.

Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall [Washington Post]
Women Who Are Giving Up On The GOP [Slate]
How Valid is Palin's Abortion Attack on Obama? [Time]
McCain Abandons Plans For New Tax Cuts [Politico]
FRC Vs. Obama On Abortion [Politico]
Abortion Rights on the Ballot, Again [NY Times]
Lawsuit Filed Against Oklahoma Ultrasound Requirement [Feminist Daily News Wire]

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