Republicans clearly hope Obama is a Democratic albatross. The Republican Party and one of its conservative allies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads portraying Obama as a liberal and tying Cazayoux and Childers to the Illinois senator.

“When it comes to taxes both Travis Childers and Barack Obama think alike — they both want to raise them,” says an ad by Freedom’s Watch, an outside group financed by wealthy Republican contributors.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the branch of the national party that assists GOP candidates, has linked Childers and Cazayoux to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. In Louisiana, the party’s ad says Obama and Pelosi represent “a radical agenda, very different from Louisiana’s values.”

NRCC Chairman Tom Cole, a GOP congressman from Oklahoma, this week said Republicans would rather run with Obama at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket than Clinton. That represents a change in attitude for Republicans, many of whom had argued earlier that Clinton would likely energize Republicans against her and thus help down ticket Republicans.