RUSH: Joe the plumber. Joe the plumber has become the star of this election right now. Joe the plumber was on Katie Couric, he was on Good Morning America today. He had a press conference outside his home in Ohio today and the Drive-Bys are dumping all over Joe the plumber. They’re calling him a racist. You know why they’re calling him a racist? Because he said Obama talks as smoothly as Sammy Davis, Jr., could tap dance or something like that. Oh, racist comment from Joe the plumber! Biden is out there saying, ‘I don’t know any plumbers that earn $250,000 in my neighborhood.’ Well, that’s because Biden lives in a neighborhood where no plumbers live, details on that coming up in just a second. By the way, Joe the plumber, you better get ready because the Obama thugs are coming after you, pal, and they’re going to try to destroy you. They’re out there saying Joe the plumber doesn’t even make $250,000 a year. There’s that magic number again, by the way. Joe the plumber doesn’t even make $250,000 a year, he’s not going to get a tax. That’s not what Joe the plumber said. Joe the plumber said he wants to buy a plumbing business that will put him in that tax bracket. We’ve got all kinds of Joe the plumber sound bites to share with you.
But there’s nothing to spread around here. Obama wants to spread the wealth. There’s nothing to spread. If he starts taxing wealth, what’s left of wealth right now, as he’s promising to do, there will be literally nothing to spread around. The Democrats have destroyed the markets. The economy needs to be rebuilt, not reorganized for socialism. The economy, quite simply, needs to be rebuilt. McCain has one challenge from now until the election, because, folks, this is about the economy. I’ve got a piece here. It’s a very scholarly piece, it’s one of these pieces filled with gobbledygook, but I, El Rushbo, am able to make the complex understandable and I’m able to synthesize six pages here into three sentences and I’m not going to bother reading you the three sentences. I went nuts reading it, I went nuts reading these pages but I stuck to it because I figured the last three sentences will tell me what I need to know with this whole thing anyway, it’s usually the case. Basically it was a study of electorates in this country and other democracies, going back to the Great Depression, studying voting habits by the entire electorate and the economy. Whenever the economy was heading down, either into recession or when it was in depression at one time, and anywhere around the world when the economy was heading down, it didn’t matter, nothing else mattered.
Whoever was in power got blamed for it and tossed out, pure and simple. As long as the economy stayed good under the new group, the new group was voted in, over and over again. When the economy goes south, bam, people get rid — that’s it. Especially when it happens prior to an election as this one mysteriously has, as this one just so coincidentally has. So McCain has one challenge, and that challenge is to tie this economy to the Democrat Party and Barack Obama, because you can do it, it can be done because that’s the truth. This economy is faltering right now because of the subprime mortgage mess. It is faltering because all of the fallout that happened after giving people mortgages that had no business being given mortgages, never were able to pay ’em back, and the pressure brought to bear by the Democrats on making those loans, forcing banks to make them and when the banks had worthless paper, they forced the banks, the bank said we’re going to have to package these and sell them as derivatives, securities, and this kind of thing. The depth that kept mounting up on no value, kept mounting up and mounting up, finally it just imploded and you can tag names, you can tag Pelosi to this, you can tag Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Jamie Gorelick, Franklin Raines, Barack Obama, ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers.
All of this that has happened in the housing market is exactly the result of plans put into place by liberal Democrats starting back with Jimmy Carter but really intensified in the Clinton years. This is a Democrat economic failure, and I keep saying this, but the evidence is clear in one way if not many. If there were a Republican to blame this on, he would be sitting before congressional committees six weeks ago. But the way it’s working out, the Republicans are deemed to be responsible because the Republicans have the White House, George W. Bush. The task is going to be to convince the American people that their economy is gone south because the Democrat Party was able to run things unchecked and they were able to stonewall reform efforts, and the very people that brought us the disaster have designed the fix, which is gonna make it even worse, and they are still in power with the ability to do even more, and now they have nominated somebody who is of their way of thinking who’s going to get into the White House if he’s elected. He’s already planning his big election night party in some big, big park in Chicago.
In Ireland, you know these online betting sites where you can wager who’s going to win? We have online stock market for presidential candidates. In Ireland, one of these websites has already started paying off on Obama’s victory with 20 days to go. Now, Joe the plumber is out there, and it’s fascinating because Joe the plumber hasn’t said who he’s going to vote for but it seems pretty obvious to me, but the Democrat Party and the Obama thugs are setting out to destroy a middle American Ohio resident who simply wants to keep what he earns. He wants to grow his business and he wants to hire more people.
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RUSH: Here’s Biden on the Today Show today discussing Joe the plumber. David Gregory: ‘We’ve moved through the debates, we’re moving into the final stretch. What happened on this debate that will be the basis of a final pitch from Obama-Biden to undecided voters?’
BIDEN: You know, as John continues to cling to the notion, evidence the fact this guy Joe the plumber, I don’t have any Joe the plumbers in my neighborhood that make $250,000 a year and are worried, the Joe the plumbers in my neighborhood, the Joe the cops in my neighborhood, the Joe the grocery store owners in my neighborhood, they make like 98% of the small businesses, less than $250,000 a year, and they’re going to do very well under us and they’re going to be in real tough shape under John McCain.
RUSH: In the first place, 98% of small businesses do not earn less than $250,000 a year, but more than that, Joe the plumber doesn’t either, Joe the plumber doesn’t earn $250,000, he wants to. He wants to buy a plumbing company. They’re perfectly distorting it. But I don’t think any plumbers live in Biden’s neighborhood. I don’t think any cops live in his neighborhood, and I don’t think any grocery store owners live in his neighbor because Mr. Biden’s neighborhood is very ritzy. From the October 1st, 2000, edition of the New York Times: ‘Mr. Biden’s 6,800-square-foot colonial-style house sits on four lakefront acres that he bought in March 1996 for $350,000. But these days, his kitchen table can be found in a 6,800-square-foot custom-built colonial-style house on four lakefront acres, a property worth close to $3 million.’ There is no way any plumber lives in Biden’s neighborhood. There is no way any cop lives there or any grocery store owner. And, by the way, I doubt that Biden has ever even seen Joe the plumber in a Home Depot because Biden’s never been seen in a Home Depot.
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RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites with Joe the plumber. On Good Morning America today, the plumber Joe Wurzelbacher. Diane Sawyer says, ‘If people making $250,000 should not be taxed additionally — by the way, it’s 3%, just 36% to 39% over Obama’s plan — if those people should not be taxed additionally even though they’re in the top 5%, what about people who make a million dollars or $5 million?’
WURZELBACHER: Why should they be penalized for being successful? I mean, that’s what you’re telling me, or that’s what it sounds like you’re saying. That’s wrong. Because you’re successful you have to pay more than everybody else? I mean, we all live in this country, I mean that was — you know, it’s basic rights, and Obama wants to take that basic right and penalize me for it is what it comes down to. I mean. that’s a very socialist view, and it’s just incredibly wrong. I mean if it’s $250,000 now, what if he decides, ‘Well, you know, $150,000 you’re pretty rich, too. Let’s go ahead and lower it again.’ It’s a slippery slope. When’s it going to stop?
RUSH: This morning on Joe Scarborough on MSNBC he and Buchanan were talking to Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign aide. Scarborough says, ‘Why do you want to tax Joe the plumber? Why do you want to destroy his dreams of starting his own business and hiring four or five people?’
GIBBS: If you’ve seen interviews with Joe the plumber; Joe the plumber m-makes, uh, from best we can tell, an income level where he’d probably receive a tax cut from Barack Obama. And Joe the plumber if he was —
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, no. That’s not what he said. He said (garbled) tax me?
BUCHANAN: We saw Joe the plumber this morning. He’s not happy with you guys.
SCARBOROUGH: Joe Biden afterwards said, ‘Hey, we’re going to tax Joe the plumber because he makes $250,000.’
GIBBS: But, Joe — Joe the plumber doesn’t make $250,000.
SCARBOROUGH: He thinks he does.
RUSH: No, it’s not that he makes 250. It’s that he wants to! He has a dream; he wants to buy the plumbing business. He wants to hire four or five more people. That will move him into Obama’s tax bracket. And, by the way, Obama lied through his teeth twice last night when McCain nailed him on twice voting for a budget authorization bill that would increase taxes on anybody earning $42,000 or more. Obama shook his head, ‘No, no, that’s not true, and even Fox News backed me up on it,’ even Fox News. I don’t know what he’s talking about. It might have been one of these stupid commentators thinks Obama’s a rock or thinks Obama is a mountain, or is cool, calm, collected, or what have you. But he voted for it twice. But anyway, this guy Gibbs, they’re now attacking him. Folks, they’re attacking you. The Obama campaign, in attacking Joe the plumber, is attacking every one of you. They’re calling this guy a liar. They are suggesting that he is selfish. They are suggesting he earns more than he at present does. Last night on Nightline the cohost Terry Moran talked to Joe the plumber, and Moran said, ‘What do you make of what you heard about your exchange with Senator Obama? Senator McCain said it essentially demonstrated Senator Obama wants to tax you and people like you too heavily and redistribute the wealth. What do you make of that?’
WURZELBACHER: Well, to be honest with you, I mean that infuriates me. I like, you know, Bill Gates, I don’t care who you are. If you worked for it, if it was your idea and you implemented it, it’s not right for someone to decide you made too much, you’ve done too good and now we’re going to tie some of it back. That’s just completely wrong.
RUSH: The thing that everybody has to realize here is that there is very little wealth. Wealth is in the process of being destroyed right now in the stock market, people’s 401(k)s. You’ve seen them. I know you’ve been scared to open the envelopes, but you’ve seen what’s happened to your 401(k)s, your retirement accounts. We got unemployment rising. There is no wealth to speak of here. We need to start creating wealth! We need Reaganomics. We need tax cuts. We need more disposable income. Look at Pelosi talking now about a $300 billion stimulus package. What is that? A $300 billion stimulus package is to put more money in your pocket. By doing what? By spending more! By borrowing more! Where are they going to get it? Where’s the government getting all its money? Have you seen the national debt? Have you seen the annual deficit? Where are they getting it? They’re printing it. Can you say ‘inflation’?
And they’re going to give you a little bit of it and they’re going to say, ‘Go spend,’ and that’s going to revive the economy. The simple way is to cut taxes. But see, government cannot do with less. The dirty little secret is it’s not even about that because tax cuts create more revenue to the Treasury. It’s the Democrats want more Democrats and control over you, and this is what Joe the plumber instinctively understands. But the Democrats have destroyed the economy. The Democrats have taken a big chunk out of people’s wealth here. There’s no wealth to redistribute right now, yet it will not stop Obama. Joe the plumber was cut off by Katie Couric last night right after he says he likes McCain’s answer on something. This is last night, post-debate analysis, Katie Couric, ‘Joe the plumber, the infamous Joe the plumber — actually not infamous — what do you think about the debate? Were you swayed either way?’
WURZELBACHER: I have an idea of who I’m going to vote for, but that’s, you know, that’s my — you know, the nice thing about going into the booth, you know, only me and the lever knows, so… I think McCain did a fine job this evening. I think he brought up some good points. I do like his health care and I do like where he stands on taxes. Obama —
COURIC: Joe?
WURZELBACHER: — as usual… Yes?
COURIC: We’re going to… We’re going to talk to you more on our webcast, because, unfortunately, we’re out of time, but thanks.
RUSH: Well, well. ‘I like his health care. I like where he stands on taxes. Obama, as usual…’
‘Sorry, Joe, we’re out of time. We’ll put you on the Internet where nobody else can see you because nobody goes to our Internet website. So that’s where we’ll park you, Joe, you big buffoon. You didn’t play it right,’ Katie is thinking. ‘You’re supposed to come here and attack McCain. You’re supposed to come here and build up Obama! We’re not going to let you get away with this, Joe.’
Joe had a press conference outside his house today. Joe the plumber outside his home in Holland, Ohio. Unidentified reporter: ‘What is it about you, do you think, that’s so attractive to the two presidential candidates that they would mention your name four times more than they would even mention Iraq?’ Now, that question is as incompetent and absurd as any you would want. McCain brought up Joe the plumber. Obama had to bring up Joe the plumber in defense. He looked in the camera, ‘Joe, you’re going to be fine with me.’ He had just told Joe the plumber he’s going to take some of his money. Last night he lied to Joe the plumber. So the report says, ‘How come this gets mentioned more than Iraq?’
WURZELBACHER: I don’t know. That bothered me. To be honest with you, I’m sure Obama didn’t want my name mentioned so it wasn’t so much as that. But I’m sure he expected it. Like I said, it was just a focal point, and if it helps the debate then I’m happy for that, but I wish, you know… I don’t know, probably talked about more important issues. You know, November 4th is coming here, we’re going to be voting shortly and there’s a lot of real issues affecting us.
RUSH: The reporter said, ‘Well, that’s the biggest issue for you. What do you hope for your son’s future?’
WURZELBACHER: I want him to live in an America that he’s proud of. I’m tired of people downing America, saying that we’re this bad country. I mean, that upsets me and my friends greatly. You know, we are the greatest country in the world. Stop apologizing for it! I mean, really. It just… (sigh) I get real mad about that. I’m not sorry for being an American, I’m not sorry for having the things I have. I’m not sorry for any of those things. I’m not sorry that we’re in Iraq. Has it kept us safe? Absolutely! I believe in that 100%. WMDs or not, I don’t care. You know, we took the fight to them. We’ve done a pretty good job there. Could we have done better? Yeah, sure. But, you know, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback. You know, and hindsight they say is 20/20. I call it X-ray vision.
RUSH: The question is just how representative of Middle America is Joe the plumber. How many other Joe the plumbers are there out there? You know, ‘the silent majority’ is the term that Nixon coined to describe them. How many others are out there that are just fed up with the idea that Obama’s going to raise their taxes; fed up with hearing their country maligned by the likes of Obama and Biden and Clinton and John Edwards and the entire Democrat presidential roster? How many Americans are fed up with the Obama campaign apologizing for America while in Berlin? How many Americans are fed up with being called bitter clingers when Obama is hanging around these elite rich Democrats in San Francisco? We don’t know. The polls are not telling us this. The polls…
Karl Rove has a piece today in the Wall Street Journal says (paraphrased), ‘You know, look, he’s outspending McCain three-to-one. He ought to have sewn this up by now. He ought to have this deal closed. This election ought to be over, and it isn’t.’ Rove’s point is that McCain is still in striking distance. Now, I asked this question: how many Joe the plumbers are out there? Ben Smith at The Politico yesterday got an e-mail from a Republican consultant who conducted a focus group. The Republican consultant e-mailed Ben Smith about the group he had just finished conducting. What he did was show them a hard-hitting ad on Ayers, William Ayers, and this was the e-mail he sent to Ben Smith.
‘Reagan Dem[ocrat]s and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Wal-Mart. Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he’s too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON’T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT…but they STILL don’t give a f***. They said right out, ‘He won’t do anything better than McCain’ but they’re STILL voting for Obama. The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups,’ he said, are these two, ’54 year-old white male, voted Kerry ’04, Bush ’00, Dole ’96, hunter, NASCAR fan…hard for Obama said: ‘I’m gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He’s gonna be a bad president. But I won’t ever vote for another [G]-damn Republican.
‘I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President.’ The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. ‘Well, I don’t know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I’m sick of paying for health insurance at work and that’s why I’m supporting Barack.” The consultant said, ‘I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized…this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and it’s time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy….’
Now, this is ostensibly from a Republican consultant who had gone out and done focus groups and sends the results to Ben Smith at The Politico. Now, granted if you read it and you have no questions about it, you might agree with the Republican consultant. I don’t mean to insult Ben Smith of The Politico, but what Republican consultant would do this? What Republican consultant would send this kind of information to…? I’m not saying it didn’t happen. If it did happen, it is indicative of something that we all know and we’re hoping can be overcome, and that is it’s the economy. It’s the economy. And we also know that the Drive-By Media has for six years been trying to convince people they live in a rotten one, that they live in a recession. Joe the plumber (we don’t apparently have this bite) this morning in his press conference said, ‘What is it about poverty? Everybody in poverty in this country’s got a cell phone. They’ve got a car. They’ve got a TV. What is it about poverty?’ This guy Joe the plumber is on the road and he’s articulating McCain policies better than McCain does!
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RUSH: So the Obama campaign and the Democrats now start attacking Joe the plumber. It’s amazing how Joe the plumber has them flummoxed. They’re treating Joe the plumber almost liked the treated Sarah Palin when she first came out. As a curiosity, do you realize this is important, ladies and gentlemen. They looked at Palin, said, ‘Who is this woman? She shoots; she hunts; she takes care of her own kids.’ And they’re looking at Joe, ‘Who is this guy? Who’s this Joe the plumber guy? What do you mean, some guy who is a blue-collar guy who is a plumber, and he’s not going to vote for Obama? Who is this guy? Who are these people who live out here in Ohio? What do you mean he wants to start a business now, who is this guy? We can’t understand this guy, this Joe the plumber.’ What the press can’t get through their heads is that America is Joe the plumber. Sarah Palin is America. Anne Kornblut, Katie Couric, sadly, Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, the Fox All-Stars, they’re not America. They have become elites.
You don’t know how hard this is for me to say, folks. Roger Ailes is one of my closest friends and he has been since 1990, and he is the chairman, chief executive officer of the Fox News Channel, I saw him this weekend, spent a lot of social time with him. It is really hard for me to tell you what I really think about what the Fox All-Stars reaction to this debate was last night. I know they’re not under any obligation to carry an agenda. They’re not under any obligation. They didn’t see it. They didn’t see what everybody else who watched this debate saw, even other people in the media, they didn’t see it. And these are the people that put us down; these are the people making fun of us for not wanting McCain; these are the people we thought McCain was the only guy who can win, McCain can reach across the aisle, independents, Democrats, McCain is the guy that can do it with honor, great story, and now they’re saying fire the campaign, McCain’s horrible, can’t do well in a debate. My gosh. Your head swims trying to keep up with them.
The Kornbluts and the Katie Courics, they try to make it out like Sarah Palin and Joe the plumbers are interlopers. It’s the press, it’s the Drive-By Media, the elites that are the interlopers. They are the minority; they are the freak show class. There’s nothing freak show about Sarah Palin. There’s nothing freak show about Joe the plumber. The freak show is the elites in Washington and New York that are in the media and out of the media. The Fox All-Stars have become elites, too, and you’ve got Jack Murtha. How in the world do the Democrats come close to winning this? Jack Murtha says that his part of Pennsylvania is definitely racist, a Democrat who impugned and maligned all of our great, brave Marines in Haditha and others of the US fighting force in Iraq. Oh, yeah, where I live, western Pennsylvania, yeah, very racist, gonna cost Obama four points at least, but he’s still gonna win. His own state he’s calling racist, western Pennsylvania. He’s going to get reelected, probably. Who knows. Hope not. It’s just amazing. I’m telling you, folks, there have to be a lot more Joe the plumbers and Josephine the plumbers and Sarah Palin types all over this country than you know or that the Drive-By Media knows or that Washington-New York elites know. If they weren’t out there doing what they’re doing and being who they are, our economy would have tanked years ago.
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RUSH: One more audio sound bite here from Joe the plumber from his press conference today. He actually had a press conference outside his house in Holland, Ohio. Now, keep in mind, the press looks at him the same way they look at Palin: Who is this freak? We don’t have people like this in America. Who is this guy? Plumber? Wants to make $250,000 and vote McCain? A blue-collar guy? Who the hell is this? Remember, now, these reporters had to get visas to go into the foreign country of Ohio to interview Joe the plumber, and this is what he said about liberating Iraq and real poverty, compared to American poverty.
WURZELBACHER: You know, my friends in the military that come back and tell me the thanks that they receive for us being there, it doesn’t get enough play. I mean we’ve liberated another country. I mean, you know, freedom, things that every one of you guys take for granted, everything that Americans take for granted, I mean these guys haven’t had it; now they got it? I mean that’s an incredible thing. You know, our guys here that are poverty stricken have cell phones. Those old people over there, you know, they have one pair of pants and a shirt. You know, so what we’ve done over there is an incredible, incredible thing.
RUSH: Here’s Joe the plumber making the case for the war in Iraq, putting it on the table in a proper context about poverty there versus poverty here, and the press looks at him like he is from Mars.
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RUSH: In a further effort to discredit Joe the plumber, CBS’ Maggie Rodriguez today said he’s nothing but a Republican pawn. Republican pawn? He spoke to Obama when Obama was going door-to-door! As though Democrats don’t have pawns. Joe the plumber also (they’re going after him here on this, too) says he doesn’t have a license, and says he doesn’t need one because he works for somebody else. He wants to buy out the guy he works for down the road. He doesn’t have a plan for it. Joe the plumber is 34, and he’s working on it. He and his boss had talked about a plan eventually where he would take over, but he doesn’t have a plan in place. He does not earn $250,000. He wants to buy the company, he wants to grow it, and then he will get his license.
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RUSH: Well, the plumbers union, the Democrat union thugs are now going after Joe the plumber. This is from the website Radar Online: ‘It remains to be seen whether John McCain’s blue-collar hero, Ohio’s Joe the plumber, is a Republican plant or not. (One thing he is definitely not: a licensed plumber.)’ This is what they’re focusing on. I mentioned this to you about 20 minutes ago. ‘Either way, though, he’s succeeded in raising the ire of a lot of his plumbing brethren, particularly those in the United Association of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry!’ This is not to be confused with the pig iron workers.
‘The UA was the ‘first international Union to endorse Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States,’ having thrown their support behind Illinoisan way back in January. Radar called them up to see how they felt about a man so inextricably linked to the world of pipes suddenly becoming a campaign talking point. ‘You know, hopefully Joe put in his time as an apprentice and a journeyman, so he can appreciate what it’s like to be a working person,’ a spokesperson told us. ‘Now that he has succeeded and has the chance to become a contractor and a business owner, he should really be supportive of Senator Obama’s tax plan, which will benefit the working-class people who really need it.” I don’t know who this spokesman is, but this spokesman is just dumb. I don’t think people understand what Obama’s tax plan is. Look, folks, there’s just a certain degree of ignorance that we’re going to have to deal with, and it’s rampant out there, and I tell you it is the most expensive commodity we face in this country: pure ignorance. Not partisanship, and not ideologues, pure ignorance, 100% ignorance, the most expensive thing we have.