Joe the Plumber a reflection of GOP campaign
Mention the name Samuel J. Wurzelbacher to most folks in D.C. and it’s likely to draw a blank stare in return. At best, someone’s eyes may flicker with recognition. Sounds familiar, can’t place him.
But Joe the Plumber, yeah, everyone remembers that guy. For a few crazy days late in the 2008 presidential campaign, Joe the Plumber was a comet shooting across the horizon of Republican politics — a flash of heat and energy for a GOP campaign that was destined to burn out soon enough.
On an October afternoon in Toledo, Joe — it’s the J. in Samuel J. Wurzelbacher — challenged Barack Obama about his pledge to end Bush-era tax cuts for high-income Americans.
“I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year,” Joe Wurzelbacher said. “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?”
Caught off guard, Obama uttered a line that cemented conservative perceptions of the Illinois senator as a dyedin-the-wool socialist.
“I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” he said.
Spread the wealth. Within hours, the words were being wielded by John Mccain as a weapon, an accusation, an indictment of his opponent’s ideology.
In that instant, Joe the Plumber became the symbol of every striving American dreamer — a working stiff certain to get ahead if only Washington got out of the way.
In one debate, Mccain mentioned ‘Joe the Plumber’ more than 20 times.
It wasn’t nearly enough to help the GOP nominee survive collateral damage done to Republicans by the epic crisis on Wall Street.
But Joe the Plumber, in that one testy Toledo exchange with Obama, foreshadowed the hyper-partisan fight that has brought near-intractable gridlock in Washington.
On one side, a president with ambitions of wealth redistribution. On the other, congressional Republicans who consider revenue raising a cardinal sin.
Joe the Plumber was the Tea Party before the Tea Party had a name.
So maybe it’s poetic justice that, just as Obama embarks on another campaign against over-subsidized oil companies and under-taxed millionaires, Joe the Plumber is back.
On Super Tuesday, while Mitt Romney was winning small in Ohio, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher won the Republican primary for the Buckeye State’s 9th Congressional District.
“I want to show Ohioans that a regular, working-class guy can run for Congress and win without compromising his integrity,” he says.
Joe the Plumber hasn’t mellowed with age. He is still Sarah Palin in Carhartt boots and coveralls — combative, cranky and charming all at once.
Joe’s first post-primary interview, on CNN, turned chippy the moment Wurzelbacher was asked what qualified him for Congress.
“What qualifies me? I’ve worked all my life. I mean, see these hands right here, there’s callouses on them,” he said. “I worked the last 25 years having to make results to feed my family, pay my bills. Politicians, you know, they live off the backs of broke taxpayers.”
This is a heartland sentiment that makes Obama more vulnerable than Democrats think.
Yes, it’s possible that the 2010 midterms marked the high point for Tea Party Republicans. A recent Associated Press poll, for example, showed 65 per cent of American voters thought it would be just fine for millionaires to pay a minimum 30 per cent tax rate.
But even as Democrats see the GOP’S soul-sapping presidential race as a blessing, a simmering anti-obama sentiment within the Republican base is ready to be stoked.
Joe the Plumber embodies all of it.
If Wurzelbacher was a novelty in 2008, in 2012 he is a reflection of the GOP in all its manifestations — economically hard line on taxes, hawkish on foreign policy and intensely conservative on social issues.
A flat tax advocate at the time he debated Obama, Wurzelbacher has endorsed Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan for a nine per cent sales, income and corporate tax.
There are bits of Joe the Plumber’s foreign policy views in Mitt Romney. Four years ago, Joe agreed a vote for Obama was a “vote for the death of Israel.” Last week, Romney said Obama’s re-election would ensure “Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change.”
On social issues, there are echoes of Wurzelbacher in Rick Santorum. In 2009, Joe said he had some gay friends but “wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.” Santorum has likened gay marriage to “man on dog” unions and placed traditional family values at the forefront.
The ideological stew that nourishes Joe the Plumber isn’t likely to get him elected in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District. He is running against a 30-year veteran — Marcy Kaptur — in a gerrymandered Democratic district.
But with his catchy nickname, his folk hero status on the right, and hours of cable TV time to fill before November, Joe the Plumber is about to get his 15 minutes all over again.