Pondering the left’s animus against Joe the Plumber, how they help “the story alive by their rabid character assassination of a man who did nothing more than ask a question,” Ed Morrissey observes:
There is a stench of desperation surrounding this, as if they sense defeat coming from a moment of honesty from Obama about his real intentions to institute a regime of redistribution. They want to discredit the man who only asked the question as if he’s some political operative who magically forced Obama to sound … well, a little like a Marxist. Why?
Why this stench of desperation for supporters of a candidate who currently leads in the polls?
Ed’s observation hit home with me. A reader had recently shared a story of her confrontation with some unhappy Obama supporters who slimed Sarah Palin on the thinnest premise. Like me, she regularly encounters Democrats and others on the left who express such contempt and vitriol for Republicans that the Bush-hatred of 2004 race seem pale by comparison.
What accounts for their rancor? They sound as if their candidate enjoys the same chance of victory as did Walter Mondale in 1984 or Wendell Willkie in 1940.
Why do they harbor such animosity for John McCain, Sarah Palin and John the Plumber? Why do they hate so?
UPDATE:Â An example of their nastiness in New York.
Politics of personal destruction, baby. The Clintons have them taught well.
If you thought the Patriot Act curtails your freedoms, wait until the socialism of Obamanomics comes to a nation near you!
They do it, because they are fascists, because they are thugs, and that’s what fascist thugs do. Thugs don’t argue with opponents, they destroy them By Any Means Necessary (isn’t that one of their slogans?).
If they played the game like we play the game, they’d be constructing arguments about why Joe the Plumber is wrong, why redistributing the ‘wealth’ (except for Democrat trust-fund wealth, of course) is a good thing.
But that’s not what thugs do. It’s not what Chavez does. It’s not what Castro does. And it’s not what Obamunists do.
It’s class warfare. The elites don’t want the unwashed masses being anything but that. They should have no say in a democracy – they should say thank you to government and sit home quietly.
Obama has had no problem whatsoever connecting with the elites – he is exactly as Joe Biden said: a clean articulate BLACK man, that they can feel comfortable with.
Can you see any of people inviting Joe the plumber over for dinner? Even though it now seems clear -that Joe and many blue class workers have a much better understanding of economics than the elites do. And all this probably from life experience – not from some high falutin’ university.
Hail to the Thief!
It’s scary that they seem to care more about the guy asking the question, than with the answer. How much Kool-Aid does one have to drink to become to blinded?
I think lots of people who always vote D really ARE terrified. I went to a dinner on campus week before last and had hear lots of Caribou Barbie jokes (as though they were novel, even!) from people who sounded really, really worried.
I think it’s interesting.
A lot of what’s happening is due to the fact that “Joe the Plumber” isn’t what McCain portrayed him to be.
He isn’t a licensed plumber. He isn’t a small businessman but wants to be one if he can purchase a plumbing company. He hasn’t paid his Ohio taxes and the state of Ohio placed a lien for nearly $1,200 on him. And, most importantly, he has since admitted he’d actually come out ahead under Obama’s tax plan.
I don’t blame “Joe”. He didn’t ask to be put in the national spotlight. The blame rests with McCain for trying to make Joe into something he isn’t in an effort to use him for political gain.
Jack Allen, playing the Democrat thug card. Attack those who question the Obamssiah, and ignore the Marxist answer the Obamassiah gave him.
What’s also striking is that today, the One and Joe Biden aren’t even trying to clarify their positions. They’re both out there sneering “whoever heard of a plumber making 250K.”
Yes, obviously only Hospital Affirmative Action Administrators and Radical University Professors who used to bomb people are entitled to that kind of money… not any of these peons who actually have to get their hands dirty to earn a living.
Liberals make me puke.
How can I send one hundred dollars to Joe to help him out? Joe is the only person in this campaign that has asked Obama a question and gotten an honest answer out of Obama. Obama said that he thinks that its only fair to redistribute income/wealth ………. that’s socialism. Does Obama deny what he said to Joe?
Because ever since Gore lost, the left feels robbed and that the Republicans hold some kind of sway over EVERYTHING, completely ignoring any “across the aisle” friends, or that the President passed everything they sent him. Forget the balance of power. It’s like American Idol gone bad.
Ask the Frost family about the politics of personal destruction. Remember SCHIP?
Malkin led the charge against this 7-year-old, digging into his parents’ finances and health decisions, and right-wing blogs were demanding insurance and police accident records of the Frost family. The purchase of their house was questioned, as was the tuition at their school, and right-wingers showed up at the front-door of their home and business. Even the choice of where the couple had published their wedding announcement was subjected to scrutiny and scorn.
Here’s Malkin on the Frosts:
Sounds like you all should be mad at Malkin, not the “MSM”, guys. They’re just following the standard Malkin set for them! How much more right-wing street-cred could you ask for?
But it’s only “Chicago thugs” who harrass the ordinary Joes. Right. More fake cries of bias, more whining, more victimizing from the same people who have used the techniques of personal attack themselves when it suited their purposes.
I do want to add one comment. It’s pretty awesome to note that Joe the Plumber is braver than the GOP veep nominee: he’s now done more press conferences, in 3 days, than Sarah Palin has following her selection.
Obamunist Thug Assaults McCain Supporter.
BTW, torrent prime, your Obamssiah hasn’t given a press conference since March 3, when he answered eight questions and ran for the door.
Pot, meet kettle.
The Left loathes Joe the Plumber for the same reasons they loathe Sarah Palin. The Left insist that they alone champion the causes of women and plumbers and others they feel are victimized by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. So when an individual that the Left believes to be a victim of the crimes allegedly inflicted upon them by the Right somehow seem content with their life and question Liberal doctrine, the Left become irrelevant and are threatened by such traitors. McCain hasn’t received nearly as much ire as either Joe or Palin from the Left because he fulfills their stereotype of oppressive Right-winger (old, wealthy, white conservative male). The Left feels betrayed by the likes of Palin and Joe.
You can believe that if Palin were an unwed, unemployed mother of five, the Left would make her their poster gal. If Joe were a disgruntled, entitled, union-card toting blue collar instead of a proud American who aspires to greater goals, the Left would canonize him as well.
Take it from a former zealous Liberal. The Left basks in its own glow as being the self-appointed champion of all things victimized: women, minorities, laborers, artists, academics, trees, endangered speckled albino gerbils, the planet, suicide bombers, filmmakers, etc. If any of the aforementioned groups gets out of lockstep and dares to live their lives without depending on the Left, they are threaten their existence and must be destroyed.
Only if she were collecting welfare. If she got out of her situation by working hard, and then became a stalwart pro-life Republican, they would want her head on a pike.
Meanwhile, the Obamas are showing their solidarity with the working class by ordering champagne, lobster, and caviar from room service at the Waldorf-Astoria.
V the K, the Left DOES want her head on a pike. And no one wants her head more than Left-wing women. Palin is an affront to all of their supposed sensibilities. She is a content, self-reliant, high-achieving woman. So you’d figure the likes of Sandra Bernhardt, Gloria Steinem and the thinking woman’s celebrity, Lindsay Lohan, would be head over heels for her. Nope. All of her accolades are trumped by the fact that she’s a conservative, which is the most reprehensible crime of all among the Left.
The Left will applaud the likes of Rev. Wright and Bernadine Dohrn while crucifying Colin Powell and Condi Rice. And for the same aforementioned crimes: they are Black conservatives who openly love their country. The Left needs victims in order to remain relevant. There is no bigger threat to the Left than a self-sufficient, successful minority.
On a side note, I am not gay but I can only imagine the ire gay conservatives must endure from their Left-leaning social circles.
Joe the Plumber has received more media scrutiny over the past 18 hours than Obama has over the past 18 months.
You gotta love how the writers at Politico.com insist on pointing out how Joe would be eligible for a tax break under Obama’s proposal.
Food for thought: In the third and final 1972 Presidential debate, Democratic candidate George McGovern made a monster pitch to the American people. He promised that if he were elected President, he would guarantee a check for $1000 to every citizen in the country who earned less than $18,000 per year. The Left-wing pundits at the time declared McGovern’s maneuver a political stroke of genius. The only problem was his proposal blew up in his face. It turned out that the majority of people who made under $18,000 a year voted for Nixon. In post-election surveys, those who were opposed to the $1000 check who were eligible for it pointed out that, even though they made less than $18,000 annually, they had every intention of earning more than that in the future. And when they finally did clear the $18,000 watermark, they didn’t want to be the ones flipping the bill for those who didn’t.
BTW, why hasn’t Obama told his followers to stop throwing Molotov cocktails at McCain signs and to stop showing up at rallies in T-shirts reading ‘Sarah Palin is a See-You-Next-Tuesday?’ Maybe the lapdog media should stop digging through Joe the Plumbers garbage and ask him. Although, it’s not too easy because the Obamassiah hasn’t had a press conference since March 3.
Meanwhile, to torrentprime’s post, the Frost family contacted the Democrat Party, volunteered to essentially whore out their child, and then screamed when they got called on it.
Joe the Plumber, on the other hand, was out in his yard playing football with his son when Obama walked up to him.
Now, you can enter the realm in which so many of your fellow Democrats reside by claiming that Joe was some kind of Karl Rove mastermind plot to put him in the same place at the same time as Obama was, which would make him equivalent to Graeme Frost and then deserving of the same treatment.
Or you can stay here in reality with the rest of us and avoid the delusions that allow you to rationalize what your Democrat party and your candidate Barack Obama are doing to someone who merely dared to ask Obama a question.
By the way, do you support Obama’s wealth redistribution plan?
On the subject of desperation, I love how the MSM puts out stories about networks planning for the possibility of a short election night due to an Obama blowout. Sure, it could happen, but it really is silly talk considering how close McCain is in the polls; he really isn’t that far behind. Of course, the media just wants people to believe ahead of time that the election is already decided so that people will get behind the winner.
Can you imagine a hard news piece about networks contemplating a short night when McCain was easily ahead in the polls a few weeks ago? Of course not.
In a way, I feel silly for even bringing up media bias, as if it were a secret. So, Captain Obvious is signing off.
Now remember everyone, torrentprime claims to be a “proud Republican”.
Who supports income redistribution, free government healthcare for wealthy white children funded by taxes that disproportionately affect poor and minority people, insisting that wearing a McCain/Palin t-shirt makes you a racist, writing in votes for Obama for mentally handicapped people, and hundreds of thousands of false voter registrations across several different states.
Aren’t “torrent” and “douche” synonyms? Seriously, if he wants to call himself a Republican, that’s his business. I don’t care about party labels. I care about right and wrong. I care about what works and what doesn’t. I care about fairness. I care about honesty. I support common sense regardless of where it comes from.
Anyone that says or does anything against Obama, will cause the Obamabots to go on the attack.
I came back a few hours later to see the rational calm responses to the Frost vs. Joe dilema. And I get the current standard for the GOP-in-decline: “Aren’t “torrent†and “douche†synonyms?”
It really has been great, in that painful, “If it doesn’t hurt it’s not working” way, watching all the blogs and sites that I use to champion go into the spiral of backbiting and infighting that will precede (I hope) the hard examination of what the GOP stands for. Reading blogs at the American Spectator, the American Conservative, Culture 11, and so on has reassured me that not all of the GOP has lost its mind. I know there are tons of conservatives-in-exile that will come back to support the GOP, with money and votes, once it decouples itself from the disastrous tenets of Bush and Cheney, those related to conducting campaigns as well as the actual policies they advance. Here’s hoping.
And torrent still doesn’t explain why he slams Sarah Palin for not giving press conferences, when his Obamassiah hasn’t given any either.
I stand by my comparison of tp to a feminine hygiene product.
And, while torrentprime whines, Barack Obama just demanded that the Justice Department probe and prosecute people for even alleging that people are engaging in voter fraud and voter registration fraud.
Breathtaking. The One doesn’t think that voter fraud and voter registration fraud are crimes — but complaining about either is.
Show of hands, who buys prime’s concern troll act? Anyone? Anyone?
That’s what I thought.
When a guy claims to be a conservative but does nothing but spout MyDD talking points and profess love for the Obamassiah, it’s quite a bit like a guy who claims to be straight but knows all the words to every show tune ever written and declares that Jared Leto to be “yummy.”
ND30: Since the GOP hasn’t proved any voter fraud yet, and ACORN is required by law to turn in all registration forms (something you ignore in every comment), and ACORN flags the ones it thinks are flawed, the GOP is clearly trying to discredit Obama’s coming (I hope) victory.
It’s a shame (although not a surprise) that you had to lie about Obama’s move today. His move today, asking for a special prosecutor, is looking to prosecute people for alleging voter fraud? Your link doesn’t show that. The news reports today don’t show that. What they do show (damn Google, I know) was to ask to investigate the FBI’s convenient leak and the Justice Department’s investigation of ACORN.
We already know (even though you’ve tried to forget) that US Attorneys were fired for not investigating bogus voter fraud, and therefore any pattern we have of vote fraud in this country is more about fake vote fraud investigations in the current Justice Department. The current leaks and investigations would lead a rational obeserver to suspect that the Justice Department is being politicized, again, by the Bush White House against the Democrats. We know it happened before (on the record, kids) in the USA scandal, and this latest investigation, leak, and timing all points to more partisan involvement by the GOP in the electoral process. So the “fabric of democracy” is not being threatened by community activists with clipboards, but by the GOP.
And VtK: there is nothing much conservative about the GOP anymore, hence my disdain for them. You can use all your dazzling grade school taunts, but it doesn’t make the GOP any more conservative, McCain’s campaign any less disgusting, or, Obama’s numerous interviews with reporters any less real. He was in Florida with a FOX affiliate. He does this all the time. Palin hides. I haven’t answered your charges up till now because I thought you knew how to use Google: Obama’s been interviewed by media all over the country, while, again, Palin hides. Sorry: Hugh Hewitt doesn’t count.
LOL…so torrentprime’s argument is to attempt to justify the Obama campaign insisting that it is illegal for the FBI to be investigating claims of voter registration fraud and voter fraud by ACORN when, as GPW elegantly pointed out, ACORN has been caught doing it in multiple states and on a massive scale.
Furthermore, the Obama argument is that there is no need to investigate a business in which the employees are regularly and repeatedly committing Federal crimes that affect the voting process while on company time and under company supervision in a number of jurisdictions, and that doing so is a crime in and of itself.
Right.
Wasn’t there something about liens against the Comrade Obama treasurer?
Try as you might, you still can’t erase Comrade Obama’s answer.
Like most Chicago machine politicians, Obama is not a socialist, or a terrorist, or an anti-white racist. But he cynically attached himself to socialists, terrorists, and racists to gain liberal street cred, to help his career.
I am hoping that President Obama, like Clinton before him, is so poll-driven and bereft of core principles that he will actually make some good decisions; now, if he actually believed anything he says, that would be scary.
It’s the Democrat-majority House and Senate that we need to be deeply afraid of.