* Former Illinois US Senator Peter Fitzgerald went after Barack Obama yesterday on behalf of John McCain’s campaign…

“For Senator Obama, reform and nonpartisanship is something to campaign on but not something he does when he actually gets into office,” said Fitzgerald who served with the Illinois Democrat in the state legislature. Fitzgerald added that Obama was nothing more than “one of those state Senators from Chicago who viewed the Democratic Party as being right 100 percent of the time and the Republican party wrong 100 percent of the time.”

* More…

“I don’t ever recall him working across party lines [when Obama was in the state Senate]. He is a very partisan and ideological Democrat.”

* More…

“In fact he rode the Chicago machine to where he is today.”

* More…

Looking at Obama’s career in Springfield, Ill., Fitzgerald said, “I don’t recall him as being a reformer.” […]

Fitzgerald acknowledged that Obama has collaborated with GOP state lawmakers on legislation, but said the bills probably had prior approval of Democratic leaders. “They weren’t controversial and it didn’t take courage to do that,” he said.

GOP influence in the state is minimal, he said.

“The Republicans there, at this point, have little or no power, and they’re just not relevant,” Fitzgerald said.

* However, the Obama campaign passed around this response yesterday…

Fitzgerald, In His Farewell Speech, Noted His Two Years Of State Senate Service With Obama And Said He Was “Almost Unequaled In His Potential And Promise…He May Surprise The Political Pundits By Voting, Crossing Party Lines At Times That You Don’t Expect Him To…” In 2004, Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) said on the Senate floor, “Barack Obama, my successor, I wish him well. It was a privilege to have lunch with him yesterday in the Senate dining room. I served with Barack Obama in the State senate for 2 years. He was coming in, in the legislature in Springfield, in my last 2 years of service there. He is an uncommonly bright and talented young man.

He is 1 year younger than I. He is the first African-American president of the Harvard Law School. He is almost unequaled in his potential and promise. I am confident he will be a credit to the State of Illinois. I think he may surprise the political pundits by voting, crossing party lines at times that you don’t expect him to. It may be a challenge for him with Senator Durbin as his whip. But I see Barack Obama as possibly being a fairly moderate voice, more moderate than many people suspect.” [Congressional Record, 11/19/04]

* And conservative columnist George Will had these thoughts today about trying to use the Chicago stuff against Obama…

It is less that Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist.

But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts — telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans’ accounts have recently shed.

In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama’s Chicago associations seem surreal — or, as a British politician once said about criticism he was receiving, “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”

Thoughts?