After a week of increasingly nasty rallies in which John McCain and Sarah Palin hammered Democratic rival Barack Obama over his “association” with a 1960s-era radical, the Republican candidates changed tactics Saturday during campaign swings through two presidential battleground states. Palin launched a new front in the culture wars here, attacking Obama on abortion, while in Iowa, McCain concentrated on a critique of Obama’s spending proposals.

On a day when an important civil rights figure condemned the tone of the McCain campaign, Palin seemed to acknowledge the nastiness. After chastising Obama for “unconditional support for unlimited abortions,” she said at a rally in this heavily Catholic, socially conservative Democratic stronghold that “Americans need to see his record for what it is. And please: It is not negative, it is not mean-spirited, to talk to about his record.”
Meanwhile in Iowa, McCain advocated for his tax cuts and his plan to balance the budget by “the end of my term in office.” He offered a scathing critique of the price tag of Obama’s spending proposals and accused him of being vague.

Poll numbers were sliding since the beginning of the hatred thing they tried.  I guess it was to try again from a different direction.