The Pennsylvania Shuffle

Many years ago, James Carville famously said that Pennsylvania was made up of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, which has long been part of the lore of the state's politics, with the two larger cities seen as more progressive, with the mix of suburbs, rural communities and small cities and towns that lean more Republican and offer far less racial diversity.

The PA GOP is apparently trying to change that image. That is, they don't want Pittsburgh or Philly excluded.

First, there was the McCain volunteer who falsely claimed to be attacked & mugged by a black male, who was provoked by the sight of a McCain bumper sticker on her car. See McCain volunteer admits to hoax. Despite denials by the party, the hoax, with its racial overtones, was pushed by the McCain campaign in the media. Time for Answers.

Then, Philadelphia decided to get in on the act, by sending an email to 75,000 Jewish voters in the state, warning that electing Obama could lead to a second Holocaust. As noted by the Caucus, Pennsylvania Republicans Send False Anti-Obama E-mail:

A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

At first blush, it was typical of the sorts of e-mails floating around with false, unsubstantiated and incendiary claims this year.

But where most of the attack e-mails against Mr. Obama have been mostly either anonymous or from people outside of mainstream politics, this one had an unusually official provenance: It was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s “Victory 2008” committee.

And it was signed by several prominent McCain supporters in the state: Mitchell L. Morgan, a top fund-raiser; Hon. Sandra Schwartz Newman, a [former PA Supreme Court judge &] member of Mr. McCain’s national task-force monitoring Election Day voting, and I. Michael Coslov, a steel industry executive.

Of course, the PA GOP is trying to distance itself from the email once it was exposed. However, McCain's Pennsylvania communications director, Peter Feldman, is the man at the center of both incidents, see Feldman Speaks -- But Not About Hoax.

It's apparently all part of McCain's new strategy to carry the Keystone state: Racism & Anti-semitism. The GOP's idea of uniting the Commonwealth.