I just received this email from Saul Anuzis of the Michigan Republican Party:

Lipstick on a pig?! That’s how Barack Obama just this week described Governor Sarah Palin, our vice presidential nominee! What an outrage! I need you to click here now to make a secure online donation to the Michigan Republican Party so we can fight back against Obama and the Democrats’ false and sexist attacks on Governor Palin.


This is a rather baldfaced lie. Only the most fevered and delusional among us could possibly interpret what Obama said as calling Sarah Palin a pig. Here is the actual text of what Obama said, in context:

“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different.”

With a laugh, he added: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

The quote doesn’t have anything to do with Palin, he’s talking about McCain and using a familiar analogy to argue that McCain is trying to dress up the same old policies under a new name. How familiar is that analogy? Familiar enough that McCain has often used it himself. Just last year he said the same thing about Hillary Clinton’s health plan:

When asked about Mrs. Clinton’s speech, he said her proposal was “eerily” similar to the plan she came up with in 1993, when she headed a health care reorganization effort during her husband’s administration. “I think they put some lipstick on a pig,” he said, “but it’s still a pig.”

Was he calling Hillary Clinton a pig? Of course not. The Republicans are simply lying about this one. This is not a matter of interpretation, this is a stone cold lie and they know it. And they’re using that lie to get people to send them money. Obama is right, they are utterly shameless.