Campaigning in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania today, Senator John McCain criticized Barack Obama for not being honest with voters about his plans, and for changing his message depending on the public he speaks to directly, and even on in what state he is.

McCain used Obama’s words on baseball in order to show that Obama cannot be trusted: when campaigning in Florida Obama said he was supporting Rays, yet when he was in Philadelphia, he said he was supporting the Phillies; the two teams will meet each other Wednesday for game one of this year’s world championships.

“Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states, but I think I may have detected a little pattern with Senator Obama,” McCain said. “It’s pretty simple really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he shows love to the Rays. It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the Plumber after he’s asked a tough question.”

He continued to criticize Obama by using ‘Joe the Plumber’: “After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to quote ’spread the wealth around.’ He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans,” McCain said.

Next, McCain took a closer look at Obama’s tax plans. “Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie. This explains some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?” McCain wondered, explaining: “Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce income taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.”

The Republican nominee for president also criticized Obama on foreign policy, using the words of Obama’s running mate Joe Biden against him. “This weekend, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars,” McCain said.

“What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response. Forget apparent. We know Senator Obama won’t have the right response.”

He proceeded to say that “we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world’s worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint. He’s been wrong on all of these.”

McCain speech could very well be one of the best he has given in weeks, as conservative blogger Ed Morrissey wrote for the successful Hot Air blog. If McCain wants to have a chance in Pennsylvania, he should repeat this line of attack time and again, until it sticks. The good news for McCain is that Obama and Biden are helping him make the case against the Democratic ticket; first we had Obama saying he wants to “spread the wealth around,” then we had Biden saying a major international crisis would break out at the very moment Obama would take office, and, on top of that, that Obama would not handle it well.

It took the Republican ticket a long time to find something on Obama, to use something against him that stuck. This particular line of criticism seems to work reasonably well, or so recent polls imply. The question is, however, whether it is in time or not. After all, Obama is leading nationally and he is doing well in most battleground states; the remaining states all have to go to McCain, and he will have to win one extra if he wants to become America’s next president.

But the attack is clear, and it is an indication of things to come if Obama wins; Republicans will use this criticism against Democrats in the coming years. We will see whether the attack will continue to pay off or not in 2010, for the elections of 2008 seem to come too early.