MIDDAY ROUNDUP

As John McCain continues to hammer away at Barack Obama’s celebrity, liberal bloggers see the Republican grasping for straws while conservative bloggers point to polls that suggest McCain is onto something. Obama, however, has gotten McCain to stop criticizing the suggestion that Americans should inflate their tires, liberal bloggers note. And the loss by a pro-life advocate in a Kansas district attorney race may portend a future Republican fight that helps Kansas Democrats such as Rep. Nancy Boyda, according to a political observer online.

McCain, who released another ad Wednesday highlighting Obama’s fame, is likely shoring up conservatives’ support with his attacks just as he’s losing the support of pundits, writes TalkingPointsMemo’s Josh Marshall. McCain spent years climbing the government ladder and seems to resent the younger Obama, writes Andrew Sullivan. But a new Pew survey finds that 48 percent of Americans believe they’re hearing too much about Obama and that could make him vulnerable to McCain’s attack, according to Hot Air’s Allahpundit.

McCain, whose campaign passed out tire gauges to lampoon Obama’s gas-saving suggestion, now says that inflating tires might be a good idea, notes MyDD’s Todd Beeton, who finds it hard to take the Republican’s criticisms seriously. But tire inflation and regular oil changes, which Obama also suggested, wouldn’t save as much oil as domestic offshore drilling could produce, according to Townhall’s Hugh Hewitt and Power Line’s John Hinderaker.

Phill Kline, who tried to prosecute abortion providers when he was Kansas attorney general, was defeated in Tuesday