The Democratic nominee has only recently begun to go after John McCain’s new running mate - once to criticize her for being against Equal Pay, and again more recently on Saturday, when he said she has not always been against the earmarks that her running mate so loathes.

Today, Barack Obama came to Flint, Michigan, prepared to go on the offensive. During his opening remarks, he dusted off the ultimate barb from 2004, when the GOP pummeled John Kerry for saying, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

Fast forward four years, throw in a “Bridge to Nowhere.”

“When it came to the Bridge to Nowhere, she was for it until everybody started raising a fuss about it, and she started running for governor - and then suddenly she was against it!” Obama told a hooting crowd of Michiganders. Familiar with the root of his statement he continued, “You remember that? For it before you were against it? I mean you can’t just make stuff up. You can’t just recreate yourself. You can’t just reinvent yourself. The American people aren’t stupid.”

Sarah Palin’s claim at the Republican convention that she “told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” prompted news outlets to investigate. According to McClatchy Newspapers, Palin campaigned for governor “on a build-the-bridge platform,” which prompted them to conclude, “Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.” That was on August 31st.

Hey, it only took Obama nine days to catch up.

According to today’s Washington Post, Obama’s veep vetter Jim Johnson is linked to an accounting scandal at his former company, Fannie Mae. The newspaper reported this morning that Johnson “was the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae’s earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae’s senior executives — $1.9 million in Johnson’s case — when the company’s performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all, according to reports in 2004 and 2006 by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.”

While Obama told reporters yesterday that, “I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages. …These aren’t folks who are working for me. They’re not people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future administration,” Republicans have seized the story. “It’s preposterous for Senator Obama to claim that the leader of his VP selection committee isn’t working for him….Obama is in a state of denial,” a McCain spokesman stated yesterday.

Today Obama surrogate John Kerry weighed in, when asked on a conference call if he’d advise Senator Obama to retain Johnson’s services.

“Let me just say first of all, I would never reveal what I do or don’t recommend to either a sitting president or somebody running for president, I think those conversations are personal and private and they belong that way,” Kerry replied. Of course the ‘04 Democratic nominee himself utilized Johnson’s services while vetting his own VP short list.

The ex-candidate called the controversy one of those “Washington grab stories” about someone who is performing a “voluntary function” for Obama. Kerry then praised Johnson for the role he performed in 2004. “He’s proven himself somebody who has a great skill at gathering that information, keeping it personal and private. You will recall there were zero leaks from my process. No person involved in it felt upset or violated by the process…he did an outstanding job in that capacity and I have no complaint about what he did for me,” Kerry said.

Romney compares McCain to Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, then immediately clarifies:

Tuftonboro, NH–

During Romney’s stump at a house party today he compared John McCain to Democratic senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry:

” Even Senator McCain who is a good man and I respect him. He’s an American hero. Senator McCain voted twice not to go along with the Bush tax cuts and there were 2 different tax cuts, 2001 and 2003 both.   He explained why he didn’t want tax cuts for the rich.  That sounds like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.  You want to keep taxes down so the economy can grow, that’s Reagan 101.”

But, at the press availability immediately following the party full of supporters and neighbors, his vacation home is close by, the New Hampshire frontrunner said he wasn’t comparing McCain to the Democratic senators:

“I’m not comparing.   Senator McCain and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are very different people so let there be no confusion there, but his rhetoric about why he did not vote for the tax cuts was almost identical to that of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy with whom he disagrees on most issues, but on tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 when he was 2 and 3 republicans voted against them,  he took the same rhetoric as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.  Today he says he didn’t vote for them because they didn’t include spending cuts and that may well be the case, but at the time,  he also said he did not vote for them because they represented a tax cut for the rich. We don’t hear that today … I’m not saying he is the same as the democrats, but the rhetoric on that topic was virtually identical.”

McCain has been gaining on Romney in the New Hampshire polls. Today the former Massachusetts governor acknowledged that because of the polls he  would be pointing out the differences between his record and Senator McCain’s more than the other candidates.