(CBS) Caroline Kennedy, who has placed her name in contention as a replacement for Sen. Hillary Clinton, was slammed by New York Republicans who view her as a “celebrity” without the qualifications necessary to function in Congress.
At the same time, it was suggested that Republicans might want her to be chosen, preferring to run against her in two years’ time than against a more experienced politician.
Speaking on CBS’ Face The Nation, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. (who has said he wants to run for Senate) called Kennedy a “People Magazine celebrity” …

ORLANDO, Fla. — Lew Oliver’s McCain-Palin T-shirt advertised his intentions, and the woman in the S.U.V. gave him an opening. “I’m undecided,” said Nicole Ellington, 31, a paralegal with two young children. “You have two minutes. Go.”
Mr. Oliver knew that her family leaned Republican because she was on his get-out-the-vote list, and he rapidly delivered a pitch honed over 22 years of volunteering for local campaigns. “Wow, you’re good,” she said. And as she drove away, Mr. Oliver smiled with satisfaction.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain goes into the campaign’s final weekend a bigger underdog than any victorious candidate in a modern election.
With four days until Election Day, national polls show his Democratic rival Barack Obama leading by an average of 6 percentage points, and battleground polls show Obama ahead in more than enough states to win the decisive 270 Electoral College votes.

NEW YORK: A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, is unqualified to be president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the closing stages of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll shows that 59 percent of voters believe Palin is unqualified to be vice president – up nine points from a week earlier. Fully a third of voters said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor in their vote for president – much …

Alleging media bias in favor of Democrats, Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin seized Wednesday on The Los Angeles Times’s refusal to release a five-year-old videotape of Barack Obama at a dinner honoring a Palestinian rights advocate.
The video shows a gathering in Chicago for Rashid Khalidi, a teacher, writer and Obama friend who is critical of Israel. Mr. Obama spoke at the dinner, where other speakers likened Israel and Israelis to terrorists. The McCain campaign said the tape could show how Mr. Obama reacted to anti-Israel remarks.

Dennis Ross, former special US envoy to the Middle East, came to this battleground state Tuesday night to use the weight of his reputation and experience to urge fellow Jewish voters to back Barack Obama.
But the first question he was asked had to do with Obama’s associations with another Middle East figure, Rashid Khalidi.
The McCain campaign is using Obama’s link to the Palestinian advocate and former Chicago university professor to hammer away at Obama, and demanded Wednesday that the Los Angeles Times release a video in its possession showing Obama …

A NCHORAGE — The Alaska Republican Party on Tuesday found itself in the awkward position of urging voters to return a convicted felon to the United States Senate.
The party is pushing for the re-election of Senator Ted Stevens, who was convicted on Monday of seven felony counts but continues his campaign for a seventh full term, in the hope that his re-election will allow Republicans to hold onto his seat even if Mr. Stevens eventually resigns.

The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck says the focus on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe has been blown out of proportion.
Last week it was revealed that the Republican National Committee shelled out more than $150,000 to dress the hockey mom. (Palin said the clothes were not worth that amount; John McCain said her designer duds will be donated to charity after the election.)
“Who is the real Sarah Palin? The Wal-Mart hockey mom or a clothes horse?” The View’s Joy Behar asked on Monday’s show.
Hasselbeck – who introduced Palin at a rally in Florida …

John McCain searching for an elusive comeback with only a week left to the election today warned that Americans face the prospect of the most liberal administration in the country’s history if the Democrats are allowed to control both the White House and Congress.

WASHINGTON – Republican John McCain declared “I’m going to win it,” dismissing polls showing him behind with little more than a week to go in the presidential race. A confident Democrat Barack Obama drew a jaw-dropping 100,000 people to a single rally and rolled out a new TV ad asserting his rival is “running out of time.”
Heading into the final nine days of the 2008 contest, the White House competitors campaigned in key battlegrounds that President Bush won four years ago as the state-by-state Electoral College map tilts strongly …