Joe The Plumber Has An Awakening-- Denounces McCain For Using Him As "A Ploy"

Wurzelbacher has only contempt for McCain & Palin; says Obama at least was honest

Looks like Sam Wurzelbacher hasn't gone back to unclogging toilets and fixing leaky faucets and old pipes. That might be expected-- How You Gonna' Keep 'Em Down On The Farm After They've Seen Paree?-- because he never did have a plumber's license. And he still has followers and audiences and gets interviewed. This weekend Jimmy Orr wrote extensively about him and his opinions for the Christian Science Monitor and last week he spoke to an audience of Pennsylvanians who had gathered of their own free will to hear and see him. He headlined a Mobilize for Liberty event in Harrisburg, thrown together by Bob Jones "University" graduate and lunatic fringe state Rep. Sam Rohrer, a Republican/teabagger candidate for governor. When Joe endorsed his bid, Rohrer was still reeling from a massive rejection from the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

Joe’s endorsement is apparently quite the coup. He says more than 200 politicians have asked for support this year, but so far, he’s only backed five. “I need to talk to candidates before I endorse,” he told me afterwards, explaining that his bar is pretty high. “We have a series of conversations – 20 to 30 minute conversations – and I grill them. I ask them questions about energy, education – make sure they’re straight.” Wurzelbacher says he also vets candidates online.

So why Rohrer? He says they share many of the same values-- the Second Amendment, states’ independence, “integrity, honesty.” Plus, “Sam is really favored amongst the tea parties. It takes a lot for them to get behind an individual.”

Joe is one of the teabaggers who has also turned against Sarah Palin. More and more teabaggers see Palin for nothing more than a GOP shill trying to capture and subvert their movement for the Wall Street and Big Business interests that fund the two contemptible Inside-the-Beltway political parties. Joe the Plumber, though, says he's no longer a Palin fan because she's backing corrupt GOP hack, John McCain.

“John McCain is no public servant... I don’t owe him shit. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it... McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

Cheney is also trying to send a not so subtle signal to Republicans that it's time to back away from Palin, who is yet to demonstrate any qualifications to lead the country, and that it may be time to leave her to dry up on the vine before she does the party more harm than she already has.

As for the teabaggers, they may guarantee Harry Reid's re-election in Nevada by running as a third party, while defeating McCain by working inside the GOP to put forward a defeated ex-congressman, J.D. Hayworth, who has been endearing himself to Arizona extremists as a radio hate show host for several years.

The country is in the midst of a Tea Party revolt movement that began last spring and has not lost steam. The revolt began over the federal bailouts-- and McCain, labeled "Obama-lite" as a result – voted for several of them.  He voted for the $700 billion general TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, the first $85 billion AIG insurance bailout, and he proposed spending $300 billion on a mortgage entitlement bailout to buy out every bad mortgage in the country.

...McCain's ratings from the American Conservative Union have gone progressively down over the years, dipping to an alltime low of just 63 last year. Even liberal-leaning Republican Senators Chuck Hagel, Lamar Alexander and Pete Domenici scored higher ratings than McCain last year. McCain's own pal Lindsey Graham, who has been censored multiple times by Republican Parties in South Carolina due to his liberal voting record, scored significantly higher than McCain with an 82.  McCain's lifetime rating from the ACU falls in the most liberal quarter tier of Republican Senators. In contrast, J.D. Hayworth, the former Arizona Congressman who is challenging McCain in the Senate primary this year, has a lifetime rating from the ACU of 97. McCain is frantically running radio ads accusing Hayworth of being a liberal, but the ads aren't resonating coming from someone so much more liberal than Hayworth. The issues McCain has championed over the years are not conservative ones, he is most well-known for his work with Democrats on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, which greatly hurt one-issue organizations like Right to Life and the NRA, and McCain-Kennedy, which would liberalize illegal immigration.

If there is one thing McCain is consistent on, it is waffling back and forth on issues. He opposed tax cuts before he supported them, in the past criticizing Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. His ratings from anti-tax organizations range are fairly low for a Republican; Taxpayers for Common Sense has given him scores averaging around 50-60%. His support of government funding for embryonic stem cell research led Arizona Right to Life to endorse Huckabee over him in the presidential primary. Predictably, he is talking tough now against the bailouts and sounding conservative, due to it being an election year, as has been his pattern in the past.

Republican party loyalists in Arizona are tired of McCain's waffling and are putting forth a tremendous effort to remove him in the upcoming election. McCain has a reputation for bullying conservatives who oppose or disagree with him, squelching the opposition in order to continue getting reelected, and insiders say people have finally had enough. Arizona's Republicans are very conservative, as evidenced by the composition of the state legislature, which is one of the most conservative legislatures in the country. Republicans and Tea Partiers in Arizona are very concerned about illegal immigration, and McCain's failed bill with Ted Kennedy attempting to liberalize illegal immigration has riled them up. Both the current Maricopa County Republican Party Chairman and a former Chairman have been seen in public wearing buttons with McCain's name crossed out. The most popular conservative blog in Arizona, Sonoran Alliance, has generally opposed McCain. A Rasmussen poll from November taken of Republican voters found McCain virtually tied with Hayworth in a potential race. (A later Rasmussen poll in January found McCain ahead, but it was taken immediately after Sarah Palin announced she would campaign for McCain, and after an onslaught of nonstop radio ads from McCain viciously attacking Hayworth) A straw poll taken at the mandatory Maricopa County Republican meeting last month, which all registered Republican Precinct Committeemen must attend, found Hayworth beating McCain by 68% to 10.5%.

McCain's family is becoming more and more of a liability for him. His daughter Meghan McCain blasted the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin on The View last week. Meghan is already known for bashing conservatives like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. Both Meghan and Cindy McCain lent their faces and names to the No Hate campaign, which condemned conservatives who supported California's Prop. 8 banning gay marriage.  McCain's brother Joe recently compared Tea Partiers to Nazis.
     
A few big names have lined up behind McCain, but it is even more significant who has not. Nationally renowned political commentator Mark Levin has endorsed Hayworth. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is actively raising money for Hayworth. As the most popular politician in Arizona, Arpaio's support will make a considerable difference. The most conservative Senator in the U.S. Senate, Jim DeMint, who is endorsing conservative candidates in contentious Senate primaries around the country, is noticeably staying out of the race. This speaks volumes, considering he has served with McCain in the Senate for years and no doubt is under tremendous pressure to endorse him. Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks backed many of the Tea Parties, had to back off under pressure from angry Tea Partiers after he made a few statements supportive of McCain, issuing a clarification that he has not endorsed McCain.

McCain's attempt to go rogue probably won't work with Arizona right-wingers, who are sick of his dishonesty and his flip-flopping. But even in Jim DeMint's home state, which is also the home of secessionism, the alliance between the GOP and the teabaggers is starting to fray. If it looked like the Republican Party of South Carolina had just surrendered to the teabaggers... well, you were just watching from outside. On the inside, teabaggers are increasingly wary of the party's tender embrace.

The partnership announced Monday by state GOP Chairwoman Karen Floyd and Harry Kibler of the Upstate Coalition of Conservative Organizations, an umbrella group of tea party organizations, was intended to create liaisons between the state party and the grass roots and help the two work together to elect more conservative Republicans... [A]fter getting calls from tea party groups across the country accusing the South Carolina organizations of selling out to the GOP, Kibler and the groups he represents are backing away from the state party.

“Everybody started dumping on Harry. He was getting calls from tea party people in California asking ‘Why did you sell us out?’” Roan A. Garcia-Quintana, executive director of the South Carolina group Americans Have Had Enough, said in an interview Friday... “Her little tour made it sound like she was up to something, and these people don’t trust her,” said Garcia-Quintana, who worked with Kibler to create the partnership.

“The impression she gave was that they had formed a coalition,” he added. “You can’t profile these people; the only common thing is that they’re sick and tired of the people in power.”

Kibler sent a press release Thursday blasting Floyd’s “misrepresentation of facts,” and announced he would be holding a news conference Friday to discuss the relationship.

“It seems that many who did not trust the GOP’s intentions from the very beginning are now convinced that the GOP’s intent continues to be to confuse, divide and hence conquer this Liberty Movement of which they appeared to be frightened not only in South Carolina, but also all over the nation,” he added... “These are not just your toothless redneck types,” said Garcia-Quintana. “These are very educated people who want their liberty and don’t want to be hijacked by the party.”

Should be interesting to watch what happens when teabagger-GOP alliances start coming up against facts on the ground-- like current teabagger darling Paul Ryan's pivotal role in passing the $800 billion TARP bailout for Bush in 2008. And, in the House, it wasn't just Paul Ryan behind it. 91 Republicans voted for the bailout-- an even bigger percentage than the Blue Dogs they love to call lapdogs. But who were the lapdogs on October 3? Well teabagging phonies like Ryan (WI), Eric Cantor (VA), Dan Lungren (CA), Wally Herger (CA), John Campbell (CA), John Boozman (AR), Gary Miller (CA), Jo Ann Emerson (MO), Sue Myrick (NC), John Kline (MN), Pete Hoekstra (MI) and... Joe "Liar" Wilson (SC)-- as well as Republicans the teabaggers detest like Wall Street shills Roy Blunt (MO), Mike Castle (DE), Pete Sessions (TX), Spencer Bachus (AL), Bob Inglis (SC), Gresham Barrett (SC), David Dreier (CA), John Boehner (OH), Charlie Dent (PA), Mark Kirk (IL), Jerry Lewis (CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Frank Wolf (VA), Mary Bono Mack (CA), Dave Camp (MI), Judy Biggert (IL), Ken Calvert (CA), Peter King (NY) and Mean Jean Schmidt (OH). In fact... if teabaggers want to support people who resisted the intense pressure to vote for the bailout, they out to look at responsible and unbending, pro-family/anti-bankster congressmembers like Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), John Conyers (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Steve Kagen (WI), Pete Stark (D-CA), Jose Serrano (D-NY), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Bob Filner (D-CA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Brad Sherman (D-CA)... and now-Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tom Udall (D-NM)! Unlike Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor and Mark Kirk, they all voted against the Wall Street bailout-- twice.