So, over the weekend Sarah Palin accused Obama of palling around with terrorists in a last-ditch effort to reverse the McCain camp’s fall in the polls, and McCain’s people promise to get “tougher” on Obama.

In response, the Obama people turn to the Keating Five:

How many years have we suffered through Republicans tarring Democrats as unpatriotic traitors? Yes Virginia, 50% of the country, and a good deal of our public servants are — according to the Republican Party — country-hating turncoats. And when you get down in the polls, the only thing you can do is take the Joe McCarthy approach and smear anyone who disagrees with you as not just wrong, but evil.

There’s been a lot of talk that Keating should be off limits, and Obama largely held his fire on that score for the duration of the campaign. But if someone is going to spread lies and guilt by association, particularly as tenuous as Obama’s non-association with William Ayers, then McCain’s darkest moment is now fair game. McCain did take bribes from Charles Keating and vacationed at his Bahamas estate, and he did give the man legislation that would help his business. That legislation eventually led to the S&L collapse.

One wonders if the Republican classic (”Barack Osama is a America-hating terrorist!”) will resonate as much as the honest fact that John McCain has for the duration of his career been a proponent of the kind of deregulation that led to our current economic fiasco. And nothing better describes this than his relationship with the criminal Charles Keating.

McCain decided to go as dark and negative as he could, and his people should have anticipated this. I suspect that the Keating Five will resonate a lot better than what the McCain camp is slinging.