The McCain campaign today accused Barack Obama of misogyny towards vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin after he attacked the Republican ticket as a pig in lipstick.

The Democratic nominee’s frustration at Ms Palin’s transformative effect on the presidential race began to show as he hammered the Republicans for laying claim to the change mantle.

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Mr Obama told a town hall in Lebanon, Virginia last night. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink.”

The remark appeared to play on a joke by Ms Palin at last week’s Republican convention, when she said that, as a hockey mom, the only difference between herself and a pitbull was the lipstick.

The McCain campaign’s truth squad immediately went into overdrive, accusing the Illinois senator of sexism towards Mrs Palin, the first woman ever to grace a Republican presidential ticket.

“Sarah Palin’s maverick record of reform doesn’t need any ‘dressing up,’ but the Obama campaign’s condescending commentary deserves some dressing down,” said RNC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson.

But the Obama campaign insisted that the attack was directed at Mr McCain, rather than his running mate, accusing the Republican nominee of a cynical attempt to play the gender card.

It noted that the analogy – an old saying – had been used by Mr McCain himself in reference to Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries.

It distributed a Chicago Tribune article published in 2007 that cites Mr McCain criticising Hillary Clinton’s health care plan. “I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” the Arizona senator is quoted as saying about Mrs Clinton’s proposal.

“Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy – the same analogy that Senator McCain himself used about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run,” said Obama campaign senior advisor Anita Dunn.

The row erupted as polls showed the Republicans leaching support from the Democrats following Mrs Palin’s selection, particularly among female voters.

A poll of polls by Real Clear Politics found Mr McCain now leading Mr Obama 48 per cent to 45.6 per cent. Gallup Tracking showed Mr Obama taking an even greater hit, with Mr McCain wiping out the Illinois senator’s eight-point lead at the end of the Democratic Convention to establish his own five-point edge.

Monday's Washington Post-ABC News poll showed a 20-point bump for the McCain ticket among white women since the previous poll, taken before the Alaska governor was unleashed on an unsuspecting American public. Among these women, Mr Obama’s eight-point lead has turned into a 12-point deficit.

The Democratic nominee has complained that Mr McCain and Mrs Palin are getting “little scrutiny” for their claims to be mavericks intent on bringing change to Washington after eight years of President Bush. Asked yesterday if he was getting angrier, Mr Obama said: “With two months to go, I think everybody needs to feel a sense of urgency.”

The extent to which he has been overshadowed was underlined by a report from the Pew Research Centre showing Mrs Palin was a significant factor in 60 per cent of campaign stories last week and Mr McCain in 52 per cent, compared with 22 per cent for Mr Obama and only two per cent for his running-mate, Joe Biden.

The dispute highlights the difficulties Mr Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have in attacking Mrs Palin, whose selection was in part intended to appeal to former Hillary Clinton supporters angry at perceived sexism during the primary race.

Mr Obama had until now been cautious in his handling of Mrs Palin, a pro-life, pro-gun mother-of-five who has sent the Republican base into raptures. Democratic strategists know that Mr Biden, a veteran senator who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will have to tread particularly carefully during the vice-presidential debate, where any attempt to belittle his rival's record could be painted as a sexist attack.

Indeed, this is the second time in a 24-hour period that lipstick has become a point of contention.

As he was introducing Mr Biden, Missouri congressman Russ Carnahan said Mrs Palin had “zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick”.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found