To listen to the Obama spin-masters you’d think that the McCain campaign’s questioning of their candidate’s association with unrepentant terrorist bomber Bill Ayers is a smear tactic falsely elevating a casual relationship between the two men into one where they worked together in promoting Ayers’ far-left goals.

Their reaction to the continuing revelations that disprove that claim is one of sheer panic -- and they have a good reason to be scared witless that any in-depth probe of what went on between the two comrades will reveal Obama’s true colors -- all of them dark red!

If the truth becomes better known -- and it will if the Ayers issue is doggedly pursued -- it will be clear that Obama was not only deeply immersed the fetid swamp of Chicago’s far-left political scene, but was from the very beginning of his career carefully groomed by the city’s socialist left to follow the path he’s on now in his quest for the presidency of the United States.

Giving credence to the charge that Obama was “groomed by an older generation of radical leftists for insertion into the American political process, trading on good looks, brains, educational pedigree, and the desire of the vast majority of the voting public to right the historical racial wrongs of the [past]” as the American Thinkers’ Thomas Lifson has written:

• Obama belonged to the socialist New Party, described by Lifson as “a radical left organization, established in 1992, to amalgamate far-left groups and push the United States into socialism by forcing the Democratic Party to the left.” A March 22, 1998 article by John Nichols in These Times revealed, “After six years, the party has built what is arguably the most sophisticated left-leaning political operation the country has seen since the decline of the Farmer-Labor, Progressive and Non-Partisan League groupings of the early part of the century.”

• Obama has been allied with ACORN and their Project Vote, the radical leftist group now charged with massive vote fraud aimed at electing Barack Obama president of the United States. Obama has long been directly involved with ACORN. An article by Toni Foulkes of ACORN, “Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign,” which appeared in Social Policy magazine in 2004, Foulkes revealed ACORN noticed Obama when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. Wrote Foulks: “He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act … Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar … and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them). Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.”

• Obama and Bill Ayers were close associates for years, going back as far as 1995 if not earlier. According to CNN: “A review of board minutes and records by CNN show Obama crossed paths repeatedly with Ayers at board meetings of the Annenberg Challenge Project. The Annenberg Foundation gave the project a $50 million grant to match local private funds to improve schools… Obama was asked to serve as the board chairman in 1995… For seven years, Ayers and Obama -- among many others -- worked on funding for education projects, including some projects advocated by Ayers ... The board, for example, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Ayers' small schools project… The funding, according to records… CNN reviewed, came directly from the Annenberg foundation which Obama chaired. While working on the Annenberg project, Obama and Ayers also served together on a second charitable foundation, the Woods Fund.”

No wonder the Obama campaign wants the Ayers connection to be off-limits.