Muslim

The campaign of U.S. Sen. John McCain has a new Web video ad up designed for one purpose only -- to convince potential voters that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama really is a Muslim, which incidentally, he is not, and if he were, who cares?

As Sam Stein reports in the Huffington Post, the new McCain ad superimposes an image of Obama over a map of Iran. The ad "lists" some of Obama's foreign policy statement as music most closely associated with the Muslim prayer call plays in the background.

The Obama-superimposed-on-a-Middle-East-map strategy seems to have picked up some steam. Writes Stein:

Indeed, the Republican ticket has been subtly pushing this line for days now. As the Huffington Post reported on Tuesday, the Republican Party of Florida is sending out a new mailer that places the Illinois Democrat's face right over a map of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. It accuses him of being "dangerously unprepared" and "no friend of Israel."

This is McCain's second attempt in the last few days to play the Middle East card. Earlier this week, his campaign re-released an old campaign ad that accused Obama of not being wary enough of Iran.

McCain's Web video, as controversial as it is, is up for some stiff competition tonight as Obama takes his case to voters on several networks in 30-minutes blocks. But there's no doubt McCain's latest commercial will get free media, which is good when you have no money left.