Obama Says McCain Made Up the Lipstick Controversy

Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at a high school in Virginia this morning, tried to take the offense by criticizing the McCain campaign for "taking over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics, enough is enough."

There was no indication that Obama and his campaign officials started the whole mess yesterday by referring to McCain's positions with the statement: "you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig."

Ben Smith of Politico wrote in a blog late this afternoon that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded to the response by saying, “Barack Obama can’t campaign with schoolyard insults and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign. His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn’t exist.”

Democrats are worried that Obama is getting off track. They feel that every day that the news media is focusing on gaffes and lipstick on a pig is a victory for the Republicans. Obama is slipping in the polls, and this discussion is a no-winner for him, political experts say.