As Governor George Bush prepares for next week's Republican convention, Democrats are doing their best to embarrass him over the conservative voting record of his new running mate, Mr Dick Cheney.
Democrats are describing Mr Cheney, a secretary of defence under Mr Bush's father in 19891992, as to the right of former speaker Mr Newt Gingrich and of the National Rifle Association.
The Rev Jesse Jackson, who is an important Democratic figure in getting out the minority vote, said that "Dick Cheney has an image that is palatable but Jesus warns us to be aware of wolves in sheep's clothing". Pointing out that Mr Cheney voted against women's rights, civil rights and child nutrition, Mr Jackson added: "Beneath the veneer lies an individual of extreme views."
Mr Cheney, who represented the Rocky Mountains state of Wyoming in Congress from 1979 to 1989, has been defending his stance in those years on issues like South Africa, women's rights and gun control.
In 1988, he was one of only four members of Congress to vote against a ban on plastic guns which could evade airport metal detectors and on armour-piercing bullets - the so-called "cop-killers". Yesterday on ABC's Good Morning America, Mr Cheney said: "I was a great believer and am a great believer today in the Second Amendment, the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms, and that the solution to our gun problems really lies in enforcing existing regulations and laws that prohibit felons, for example, from owning guns, rather than imposing new requirements on law-abiding citizens."
He denied that his vote opposing economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa meant that he opposed freedom for Mr Nelson Mandela, then in prison. "The notion that somehow I was opposed to freeing Nelson Mandela is a typical distortion by Al Gore," he said.
Mr Cheney defended his vote against the Equal Rights Amendment in favour of women by saying that he feared it would require the drafting of women into the military. He said that he wanted to change the text to state that drafting women would not be required but that the rules under which it was being debated barred any amendment.
The Bush campaign has rejected Democratic charges and some media comment that the choice of Mr Cheney shows overconfidence about the outcome of the election in November.