RACINE, WI - John McCain defended his new television ad and expressed his disappointment in Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric Thursday.

“I’m very disappointed and race will not have any role in my campaign, nor is there any place for it. I’m disappointed that he’s used (race),” McCain told reporters before takeoff for Orlando, when asked about the statement put out by his campaign manager today accusing his Democratic rival of pulling the “race card.”

“It’s very clear what his comments imply–anyone who looks at those and previous comments that he has made. I think it’s very clear that he has. I’m very disappointed and I repeat it wont be part of our campaign,” he added.

Asked if he thought his “Celeb” spot is below the belt or overly negative, McCain said the spot is “all about” energy, and retorted that it was Obama who first turned the campaign negative.

“Senator Obama has continuously attacked me, but the point is that we’re drawing differences between our two campaigns, what we stand for and believe in. That is clearly what the ad was all about it. It was about energy and it was about taxes,” McCain said. “He’s run negative ads on me continuously and I might point out for the record that he was the first. I think it was an ad that points out the differences between our two plans of action that we for America.”

During his town hall meeting in the Badger State, McCain was also asked about the “Celeb” ad by an Obama supporter who questioned whether he was going back on his commitment to run a clean campaign.

“Let me say that there are differences and we are drawing those differences. And I’ve said earlier I admire his campaign but what we are talking about here is substance and not style and what we are talking about is who has an agenda for the future of America,” McCain said. “All I can say is that we are proud of that commercial. We think Americans need to know that I believe that we should base this campaign on what we can do for Americans here at home and how we can make America safe and prosperous and that is the theme of our campaign.”

The questioner, Wendy Chavours-Freeman, a 23-year old student from Mississippi told Fox after the event that she supports Obama but came to the town hall to listen “to the other side.” She added that she believes the new ad is “below” McCain.

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor responds to Davis statement:

“This is a race about big challenges-a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies. Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.

RACINE, WI — It has gotten ugly.

The McCain campaign is accusing Sen. Obama of playing the “race card” for stating yesterday that the presumptive Republican nominee was engaging in fear tactics and xenophobia.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,” said McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis Thursday, citing multiple statements by Obama yesterday.

“So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making,” Obama told supporters in Springfield, MO Wednesday in response to the tv spot McCain released yesterday.

In the new ad, McCain compares his Democratic rival to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in an attempt to paint him as an empty suit and a vapid celebrity who lacks the experience and skills for the White House.

McCain Senior Adviser Steve Schmidt tells Fox that the campaign felt an “honor-bound duty to respond” to the Obama comments adding that “a lie unrebutted can become truth.” McCain was the victim of racial dirty tricks during the 2000 presidential primary when allies of the Bush campaign spread a rumor that McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually his illegitimate black child.

Schmidt said the campaign learned a lesson from the 2000 experience. “You must respond instantaneously and with all you got,” he said.

No response yet from Camp Obama.

Senator Barack Obama spoke to about 600 paying guests at a fundraising reception in downtown Jacksonville, where attendees paid between $500 and $2,300 to Barack Obama for America. The Illinois senator spoke for about twenty minutes to his devotees, and noted the clear choice this November on issues surrounding the economy, health care, the war, and overall philosophy.

“Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me,” Obama said, just one day after he he told reporters that Republican 527 groups will emerge this election and run negative ads during the election.

Obama continued that the Republicans’ message would invoke the Democrat’s race. “He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? He’s got a feisty wife,” Obama told the crowd, which cheered.

“We know the strategy because they’ve already shown their cards. Ultimately I think the American people recognize that old stuff hasn’t moved us forward. That old stuff just divides us,” he said.

Listen to audio from that fundraiser here:

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, FL — John McCain declared Thursday that he will do “everything” in his power to ensure race plays no role in a general election that he says should remain focused on policy differences.

Asked how he can prevent the racial controversies like the ones that took center stage during the Democratic primary from flaring up in the general against Barack Obama, McCain vowed to keep the tone of the campaign respectful.

“I will do everything I can to keep anything that may be that kind of ugliness out of this political campaign and the best way you do that, I think, is to show always respect for your opponent, no matter who that opponent is. And I have a record of that in the campaigns that I have engaged in my political life,” McCain told a couple hundred journalists at a Florida Society of Newspaper Editors conference outside Orlando. “So yeah, there were comments made from time to time (during the primary), but I got the impression when those comments or those things came up that the voters resoundingly rejected that kind of thing. They don’t want that in the United States of America. And when I see the growing presence and influence of people from all walks of life in America, I am more proud of America.”

A number of Hillary Clinton surrogates made controversial statements alluding to Obama’s race during the primary, including;
–President Clinton comparing Obama’s South Carolina primary victory to that of Jesse Jackson’s in 1988,
–Geraldine Ferraro commenting that Obama’s quick rise in national politics was partially due to his race,
–and statements by Billy Shaheen and Bob Johnson about Obama’s previous cocaine use.

Similarly, a number of state Republican parties have made an issue out of Obama’s middle name, Hussein, or his connection to Jermiah Wright in recent months. McCain repeatedly rebuked those party officials for their conduct but said most recently that he was done playing “referee” on the Wright issue.

Despite polls which indicate that Obama’s race is still a factor for some voters, McCain says that his “thousands and thousands of hours” of contact with Americans in the last year causes him to instead see the glass “nine-tenths full.”

“I believe the overwhelming majority of Americans have made a judgment and will continue to make judgments based solely on what they feel are the qualifications of the candidate,” he noted. “I think it’s frankly something that maybe we should look at the glass full or maybe nine-tenths full about the fact that an African American and a woman both competed for the highest office in this country. I think that’s something that we should be really proud of.”

He added that Obama has inspired people in a “very, very impressive way.”

During an interview with a Philadelphia radio station yesterday, Barack Obama was asked to clarify remarks he made about his grandmother in his speech on race Tuesday, where he addressed his complex relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.  I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe,” he said candidly of his maternal grandmother.
When explaining the remark a few days later during the radio interview, Obama said, “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away, and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

Many pundits and commentators pounced, denouncing Obama’s use of the phrase “typical white person” as racially charged. Watch his response at a press availability today to those accusations below.

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Note Obama volunteered volunteered the part of his answer on what he did and did not hear during Reverend Wright’s sermons that he considered to be “controversial.” He’s also gotten criticism from “conservative commentators” about another line from his Philadelphia speech on race, when he said, “Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy?  Of course.  Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?  Yes.  Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views?  Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Pundits and journalists labeled Obama’s Philadelphia speech “a test,” a defining moment in Barack Obama’s candidacy, where he would address the issue that could sink his chances of becoming the nation’s first black president – his relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Over the past week, Wright has been the focus of much scrutiny over his anti-white and controversial statements about the United States of America made at the pulpit in the Chicago church where Obama attends. Which explains all the media attention Obama’s 37-minute-long speech received. Much of his remarks were carried live on the cable television networks, while the campaign had to accommodate press in an overflow room, something usually reserved for the hundreds of supporters who can’t fit into a gymnasium or auditorium.

The speech was written by the senator himself, and described by staffers as very personal in nature. As he has since the story broke last week, Obama distanced himself from Reverend Wright’s “incendiary” remarks, which he called “divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems.”

He acknowledging there were still “nagging questions,” and attempted to explain why he hasn’t further distanced himself from someone who could utter such controversial words.

“Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man,” he said, reading evenly from a teleprompter.

Obama described his 20-year relationship with his former pastor; how Wright introduced him to the Christian faith and some of the good Wright has done in the community. He also attempted to explain the complexities that often go hand-in-hand with African American churches.

“Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me,” Obama explained. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.”

Obama assured his audience that this speech was not meant to “justify or excuse” Wright’s comments. “I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork,” he said. But to do so “would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.”

What followed was a lengthy and personal assessment of race in America.

Keep reading below the jump….Watch Obama’s speech here:

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Barack Obama today took questions from the media following a town hall meeting in Monaca, Pennsylvania. The purpose was for Obama to talk about the economy and respond to Senator Clinton’s speech today on the Iraq war.

When faced with multiple questions about his relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama assured the assembled press corps that he would address our questions at a speech tomorrow in Philadelphia.

“I am going to be talking about, not just Rev. Wright, but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks. So I don’t want to give a full preview – you might not come to the speech,” he told reporters.

The speech, billed as a “major address on race, politics, and unifying our country,” is still being written by speechwriters and the senator himself, who considers this speech to be very personal, per a senior staffer. While he will discuss Wright, the speech was not scheduled in direct response to the storyline per se, but because the issue of race has come up so prominently in the past few weeks, and during the course of the campaign.

At today’s media avail, the senator deferred several questions on Wright to the speech, at one point noting tomorrow’s event will be “a lot more fulsome than a press conference.” He added, “Does that make sense?”

But Obama did allow a small glimpse into his thoughts, saying, “I think the caricature that’s been painted of [Wright] is not accurate. And so part of what I’ll do tomorrow is just to talk a little bit about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently,” he said. Trinity Church issued a statement yesterday saying Wright’s character was being “assassinated” by the media.

The only other question he fielded on the subject was when asked how the story has impacted his campaign. “You guys are in a better position to assess that than I am,” he replied.

Watch the exchange with reporters here:

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 Today while Barack Obama toured a wind turbine factory in Fairless Hills, PA, his campaign held a conference call to respond to Geraldine Ferraro’s comments. Ferraro, a former vice presidential candidate and current Clinton surrogate, told a newspaper that Obama was “lucky to be who he is.”  “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Ferraro told the Daily Breeze newspaper. “The country is caught up in the concept,” she said.

Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod responded to the remarks on a conference call with reporters, saying this demonstrates a pattern with the Clinton camp. “Whether it was the Bill Shaheen incident, the Bob Johnson incident, Senator Clinton’s own inexplicable unwillingness to make a direct statement on 60 Minutes about, about, Senator Obama’s Christianity, even though they’ve shared prayer groups together in Congress.  All of it is part of an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed.   If they want to, they ought to set a tone and do what we’ve done and when people say things not in keeping with what is the spirit of our campaign we’ve been very firm in dealing with that.  They have not.”

Axelrod continued, “The bottom line is when you when you wink and nod at offensive statements, you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes, and we call upon the Clinton campaign to take firmer action in this regard.” More pointedly, Axelrod said, “Congresswoman Ferraro is a member of the Finance Committee.  She is a surrogate for Senator Clinton, and she ought to be removed from those positions”

While his campaign has been pressing the issue, Senator Obama himself has remained mum. When asked about the comments during his tour of the turbine factory, Obama, surrounded by members of the press, laughed it off. “See, this is what we get.” Later, when another reporter asked if Ferraro should resign while he was greeting voters following a town hall, Obama did not acknowledge the question or the questioner.

Senator Barack Obama returned to New Hampshire after a solid victory at the Iowa caucuses early Friday morning. He held two rallies in the state, urging voters to embrace his message the way Iowa did Thursday.

“What they realized,” he said of Iowans, “was that the real gamble was to have the same old folks do the same old things, playing the same old Washington game over and over and over again and expecting different results. That’s the gamble we cannot afford. That’s the risk we cannot take. We need to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history, and New Hampshire, that’s what you can do in four day’s time.”

It is evident that Obama is seeking support from New Hampshire’s all-important Independent vote. Throughout the day, Obama touted his ability to bring Republican and Independent voters into his coalition. “If there are Republicans and Independents who are working with me, that makes us stronger and I want to change the electoral map in America. I don’t want another election like 2000 and 2004,” he said in Concord.

So how much weight is the Obama campaign putting on his Iowa victory? Obama himself told reporters en route from Iowa to New Hampshire early this morning that Iowa “sparked a potential movement for change in the country that will be inspiring for a lot of people.”

In the post-glow from the Obama victory, one of the candidate’s Iowa surrogates suggested that the candidate would fare well in the Granite State because the campaign “always” thought he was a stronger candidate there than Iowa (despite his lower poll numbers here in New Hampshire).

But an Obama supporter outside Friday’s annual Democratic 100 Club Dinner fundraiser in Milford, New Hampshire, informed me that, although she hopes Obama can pull off a victory, it seems unlikely because of the state’s views on race. She also pointed out that the state was among the last in the nation to recognize Martin Luther King Day. It wasn’t until 2000 that the state recognized the holiday.