Obama: 'You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig; It's Still a Pig'

The Democrats are stepping up their personal attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin, and it starts from the top of the ticket.

Ben Smith of Politico writes in his blog today that Sen. Barack Obama is using questionable references on the stump in regards to his characterization of Gov. Sarah Palin. In this case, he talked today about a "pig.":

Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."

"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

"We've had enough of the same old thing."

The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported today that the line was used elsewhere:

Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan on Tuesday – introducing Joe Biden at a campaign event – ripped into Palin’s record and punctuated it with this snarky jab. “There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick,” he said. Later in the day, Obama used a variation of the lipstick line, though he was clearly talking about the McCain-Palin reform rhetoric. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said. "It's still a pig."

This comes a day after Keith Olbermann used his MSNBC show to attack Palin's faith, labeling it as "extreme" and asking if Americans should be terrified.