Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith write in the Politico:
The spread of these e-mails has forced Obama to embark on a campaign to Americanize his image and his biography. Pivoting away from his pitch to a primary election audience uninterested in flag-waving and nationalism, he's returning to the message that first brought him to the national spotlight in 2004: the idea that his is the quintessential American story. He's also drawing the campaign into partisan combat, blaming Republicans for the smears even though they have not been traced back to GOP sources. "The Republicans, they're trying to make [it] ‘this is not about you; it's about me.' They're trying to say, ‘Well, Obama, we don't know him that well, he hasn't been around that long, he's got a funny name; maybe he's a Muslim,'" Obama said Monday in Montana. "They want to make people worry about me."
Blaming Republicans for the smears even though there is zero evidence that Republicans are responsible for them--isn't that called a smear?