MINNEAPOLIS--Barack Obama will find it hard to win the rural voters he needs to capture Colorado's nine electoral votes this November, former Bush Administration official Karl Rove told reporters Wednesday morning.

Speaking outside the Republican National Convention Colorado delegation breakfast at the Four Points by Sheraton Minneapolis Hotel, Rove said Colorado was "changing in a way that (John McCain) has the ability to win" the state.

"If you're a Democrat, you've got to do two things in Colorado. You've got to run really well in the rural part of the state - not win it, but eat at the Republican margins out on the plains and out on the Western Slope," Rove said. "And you've got to do well among suburban independents and suburban soft Republicans in Arapahoe, Jefferson, the conservative Republican suburbs of Denver."

Obama will have trouble in rural Colorado, Rove said, after his remarks in Pennsylvania earlier this year that small-town residents "get bitter" and "cling to guns or religion." It also helps that McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is "a gun-toting, outdoors-loving, hockey-playing mother of five," Rove said.