PALIN: POLITICIZING IRAN BY SENDING A DOG WHISTLE TO PUMAS (AND MISLEADING VOTERS ABOUT OBAMA)

Sarah Palin was going to address a rally in New York today by the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now; the invitation to Palin was withdrawn when Hillary Clinton, who had been scheduled to address the rally, announced that she wouldn't attend.

Palin's handlers wrote a speech for her that was mostly standard-issue Iran-bashing; The New York Sun reproduces it today. This passage, however, was pure politics:

... Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that" effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans....

This, obviously, was yet another attempt by the McCain campaign to drive a wedge between Clinton supporters and Obama. It's also an attempt to deceive voters -- although the McCain campaign doesn't want you to believe it, Barack Obama did, in fact, co-sponsor a bill in 2007 that designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization (FactCheck.org has the details); the bill Obama didn't support was the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which, as FactCheck notes,

did more than just urge the president to name new terrorist groups. It also expressed the sense that it is "a critical national interest" to prevent Iran from "turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force." Some Democrats, such as Jim Webb of Virginia, argued that the amendment "could be read as a back-door method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate."

Would Hillary Clinton have used the event to score political points? I don't know. I do know that Palin would have -- and the McCain-Palin team is clearly happy to let you know that.

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MORE: Hillary Clinton issued a statement with not even a hint of partisanship.