CNN and Time magazine ran breathless stories yesterday reporting that the McCain camp is giving up on Colorado. The reports relied on anonymous sources to gin up GOP anxiety about the battleground state.

You can read the Obamedia spin here.

Or you can read about Sarah Palin’s three-stop tour in the state yesterday that brought out thousands of Coloradans in Colorado Springs, Loveland, and Grand Junction.

Thousands showed up at the first two events (Colorado Springs attendees began lining up at 5:30am in the morning in bitter cold); security glitches apparently kept many who had waited for hours out of those venues.

KREX reports on the last stop, which broke records:

With just 15 days to go until Election Day, there was a record breaking crowd at Suplizio. According to Mesa County Republicans the rally drew 22,000 people making it the biggest in Grand Junction’s history. The speech was only about 15 minutes, but it touched on a variety of issues from energy independence to the economy.

The crowds have cleared out and now the army of 400 volunteers are tearing down. Mesa County is overwhelming red with registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats 2 to 1. The last event like this at Suplizio Field happened back in 1974 when President Ford came, but today it was all about Sarah. Her visit lasted less than 2 hours, but the scramble for our state’s 9 electoral votes is far from over. In politics a lot can happen in 15 days.

Exactly: It is far from over.

Words you won’t see in the Obamedia.

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More via Slapstick Politics:

“It’s not true,” McCain spokesman Tom Kise responded to PolitickerCO.com. “I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

“We see the race tightening both internally and in public polling,” said Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s national communications director, in a statement. “We are within striking distance in the key battleground states we need to win.”

“Insider” sources are always problematic, even for blogs. Is the campaign already cutting its losses? If so, then why waste a day of Palin blanketing the state, and announce plans for McCain appearing in Colorado later in the week? It makes little sense to believe Pennsylvania is part of the strategy (a state Bush failed to capture twice) but that Colorado is suddenly somehow off the table.