There has already been a lot of media talk about Obama's name, from "accidentally" misspelling his name as "Osama" to "accidentally" misspelling Osama's name as "Obama". There has also been a smear campaign trying to show that he attended an Islamic indoctrination school in Indonesia as a boy (which has already been thoroughly debunked).

But your point remains. Certainly a lot of people interested in keeping him out of the White House think that implying that he's got terrorist connections, mostly based on his name alone, is a useful tactic in discrediting him. And I'm afraid that they're right -- the American people are that stupid.