Remember the "fathered a black child" smear campaign Bush used against McCain in 2000, effectively ending McCain's chances?

Someone, most probably Karl Rove, ran an anonymous phone poll where the question was: "Would you vote for McCain knowing that he fathered a black child?"

The McCains had an adopted daughter named Bridget , whom they found in a Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh.

Someone is trying to pull a similar campaign against Obama. A friend of mine from South Carolina, which holds its primary on 26 January, got one of these "push-poll" phone calls asking him the following question:

"Would you vote for Obama, if you knew he had a Muslim upbringing?"

There has been a previous attempt to spread rumors that Obama is a Muslim, both by Fox and by an unknown group who have been circulating an anonymous email.

The main suspect behind the earlier attempts was Hillary Clinton's campaign team. My friend strongly believes that Clinton is behind the latest attempt, but with these anonymous push-polls, it is impossible to know for sure.