The Left Declares War On Joe The Plumber
By Michelle Malkin
October 17, 2008
Six-term Sen. Joe Biden's got some nerve going after citizen Joe the
Plumber. But the entrenched politician from Delaware, who fancies
himself the nation's No. 1 Ordinary Joe, had no choice. Obama-Biden
simply can't tolerate an outspoken citizen successfully painting the
Democratic ticket as socialist overlords. And so a dirty, desperate war
against Joe Wurzelbacher is on.
The left's political plumbers are attacking the messenger, rummaging
through his personal life and predictably wielding the race card once
again. It's standard operating procedure for the Obama thug machine.
Wurzelbacher, in case you've been in hibernation, is the small-business
man from Ohio who questioned Obama about his tax plan during a Toledo
campaign swing last weekend. The revealing exchange was caught on tape
and broadcast widely across the Internet and TV airwaves.
In response to Wurzelbacher's question about why he should be "taxed
more and more for fulfilling the American dream," Obama sermonized that
he needed to "spread the wealth around" because "it's good for everybody."
John McCain flung that chilling Marxist mantra back in Obama's face
during Wednesday night's presidential debate and repeatedly cited Joe
the Plumber's plight.
Obama squirmed. The dirt-diggers started Googling. And the next morning,
six-term Sen. Biden launched the first salvo against the Ohio
entrepreneur on NBC's "Today Show," challenging the veracity of his
story: "I don't have any Joe the Plumbers in my neighborhood that make
$250,000 a year."
Under an Obama-Biden administration, they'll make sure /no /Joe the
Plumbers ever earn such a salary. "It's good for everybody," don't you know?
Biden, as is so often the case, twisted the facts about Wurzelbacher. No
surprise there. Slick Joe Biden is the one who tells fables about
visiting a diner in Delaware that hasn't been open in years; spins yarns
about getting "forced down" in a helicopter over Afghanistan because of
perilous conditions that turned out to be weather related, not al-Qaida
related; and continues to slander the family of the man involved in his
wife and daughter's fatal car accident (crash investigators cleared the
now-deceased driver of drunk driving, despite Biden's insinuations). But
I digress.
Wurzelbacher never claimed to be making $250,000 a year. He told Obama
that he might be "getting ready to buy a company that makes about
$250,000, $270,000" a year. His simple point was that Obama's punitive
tax proposals would make it more difficult to realize his dream.
Obama's followers couldn't handle the incontrovertible truth. Left-wing
blogs immediately went to work, blaring headlines like "Not A Real $250k
Plumber!" Next, they falsely accused Wurzelbacher of not being
registered to vote -- he's registered in Lucas County, Ohio, and voted
as a Republican in this year's primary.
Next, they called him a liar for identifying himself as undecided. Only
registered Democrats and fake Republican tools used in mainstream media
stories and YouTube debates are allowed to use that label, you see.
Next, award-winning liberal blogger Joshua Marshall cast Wurzelbacher as
some kind of rabid freak for calling Social Security a "joke" -- as if
no working-class Americans could believe that the federal government's
entitlement programs were a rip-off unless they were bought and paid for
by the McCain campaign.
Then, suddenly, the journalists who wouldn't lift a finger to
investigate Obama's longtime relationships with Weather Underground
terrorist Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright sprang into action rifling
through citizen Joe Wurzelbacher's tax records. Politico.com reported
breathlessly: "Samuel J. Wurzelbacher has a lien placed against him to
the tune of $1,182.92. The lien is dated from January of '07." Press
outlets probed his divorce records. The local plumbers union, which has
endorsed Obama, claimed he didn't do their required apprenticeship work
and didn't have a license to work outside his local township.
Hang him!
After Wurzelbacher told Katie Couric that Obama's rhetorical tap dance
was "almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.," the inevitable cries of
"bigotry" followed. (There are now tens of thousands of hits on the
Internet for "Joe the Plumber racist.")
Welcome to Joe the Plumber Derangement Syndrome. If you can't beat him,
smear him. It's the Obama way.