DENVER, Colorado (AFP) — Republicans, who mock Barack Obama as a self-appointed savior, gleefully pounced Thursday on pictures of a classically-themed set for his big convention speech, which they said resembles a temple.
The Democratic presidential candidate will accept the party White House banner before a more than 70,000-strong crowd at an outdoor football stadium here late Thursday.
Pictures and an aerial film footage of the set being constructed for the speech show a curved, backdrop with creamy, gray column-like structures, which could suggest a classical structure, like a Greek or Roman temple.
The backdrop may also be intended to evoke the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King gave his soaring "I have a Dream Speech" exactly 45 years to the day before Obama's keynote address.
As anticipation for Obama's address built, Republicans sent out an edition of their "Audacity Watch" email newsletter which they use to point out perceived examples of hubris by the Obama campaign, titled "The Temple of Obama."
McCain also featured the structure on a blog on his website.
The McCain campaign has issued a flurry of campaign commercials mercilessly ribbing the Democratic candidate over his elevated rhetorical style, and mocked Obama over a White House-style lecturn he once used.
In one ad, titled "The One" Obama is depicted as a quasi-religious figure who "anointed" himself to lead the world.
"Can you see the light?" the hard-hitting negative ad asked, following up on a McCain theme that the Illinois Democrat is arrogant, transfixed by his own celebrity and not yet ready to lead.
"It shall be known, that in 2008, the world will be blessed," said the narrator of the minute-long web video sent to McCain supporters in a fundraising appeal.
"They will call him, 'The One,'" the advertisement said, using a sarcastic tone and stark religious imagery.
The ad features moments from Obama's soaring speeches, taken out of context, to frame an image of a candidate McCain supporters say presumptuously acted as though he was already president during an international tour last month.
A previous furore raged over the previous McCain attack, ad, which compared Obama to troubled popular culture divas Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and mocked his global celebrity.
There was no immediate comment from the Obama campaign.
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