NASHVILLE — Tennessee Republican Party officials may be pleased with their controversial online video questioning the patriotism of Democratic presidential front-runner Michelle Obama’s wife, but the state’s two GOP U.S. senators are not.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, said in a statement that the senator’s office has called on the Tennessee GOP, headed by Chairman Robin Smith, of Hixson, to pull the video that was posted last week on the online service YouTube.

Mr. Todd said that ever since Mr. Corker’s own 2006 campaign, in which the Republican National Committee ran an ad some critics denounced as racial, “we have strongly encouraged the national party and state parties to absolutely refrain from getting involved in negative personal campaigning.”

Mr. Todd said the senator has asked the state party to remove their You Tube ad from their Web site.

“Republicans will be in much better shape if we spend our time focused on issues like reducing federal spending, lowering the cost of health care and creating a coherent energy policy,” Mr. Todd said.

Lee Pitts, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said when asked about the state GOP video that “there are probably better ways to communicate our pride in America, and we need to focus on those.”

State Republican Party spokesman Bill Hobbs said Monday evening he had no comment.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Hobbs appeared pleased by the uproar the video, posted last week, was causing and called complaints by U.S. Sen. Obama “ridiculous.”

“Three hundred thousand people watched it on YouTube,” said Mr. Hobbs, later amending the figure to 482,000.

The video features remarks made by Sen. Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, during February campaign appearances, in which she said, “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”

The four-minute video replays the remark six times and frames it with commentary by Tennessee Republicans, identified mostly by their first names, on why they are proud of America.

During an appearance Monday with his wife on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Sen. Obama told the Tennessee Republican Party to “lay off my wife” and criticized the state’s GOP as “low class” for posting the online video.

Mr. Hobbs defended the use of Mrs. Obama, noting she was speaking at campaign events when she made the remarks.

One person featured in the video is Bob Pope, a Nashville-area businessman. Mr. Hobbs described Mr. Pope as a “big Second Amendment guy, runs a big gun show.”

On the GOP video, Mr. Pope, who runs Bob Pope’s Gun Shows, says, “I’m Bob Pope, and I’m proud to be an American, because mainly of the First Amendment, the right to worship God anywhere I choose to, and the Second Amendment, I get the right to keep and bear arms.”

In 1994, Mr. Pope came under criticism from state Democrats after running a full-page Nashville newspaper ad attacking statewide Democratic candidates’ stances on gun rights.

Democrats at the time contended that Mr. Pope had an ownership interest in a Nashville topless dance bar, Bob’s Gold Club. In an October 1994 interview with the then-Chattanooga Times, Mr. Pope acknowledged having a financial interest in the club.

“I am not in the direct management of it,” Mr. Pope said at the time, noting he put up money for the club four years previously as an investor.

Efforts to reach Mr. Pope on Monday through a cell phone listed on his gun show Web site were unsuccessful. Bob’s Gold Club, meanwhile, is no longer listed in telephone directories.

Asked if he had known of Mr. Pope’s 1990s’ ties to a nude dance bar, Mr. Hobbs said no.

“I’d have to know more details about the story,” Mr. Hobbs said of whether he would have used Mr. Pope in the video had he known of the connection.