Obama’s opponents seize on his ‘small town’ remarks

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) pounced on rival Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) comments about small town Americans clinging to "guns, religion or antipathy or to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration."

{mosads}Obama reportedly made those comments recently, and after they surfaced Friday on the Huffington Post, both Clinton and McCain seized on them, calling Obama elitist and condescending.

Prior to making the controversial remarks, the Illinois senator had said: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.”

Clinton focused her response on Pennsylvania voters, a state where she and Obama are locked in a tough battle ahead of its April 22 primary.

The former first lady said in a statement that "Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," but rather someone who will fight for them.

McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt called the remarks "revealing," adding that it is "hard to imagine somebody that is running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

Obama's campaign struggled to explain the remarks, faulting candidates for saying anything to get elected and challenging McCain to a debate over who is more out of touch with mainstream Americans.