To bring home the point that Senator Barack Obama will “raise taxes and redistribute your hard-earned money,” Palin told a crowd of thousands filling the seats of Lancaster’s Clipper Magazine Stadium: “I’ve really gotta hand it to Joe the Plumber over there in Toledo. Somehow he got Barack Obama to finally state his intentions in really plain language.”
Joe Wurzelbacher, who was made famous as “Joe the Plumber” by Sen. John McCain in Wednesday night’s final presidential debate, had approached Obama during a campaign stop in his neighborhood last week, asking the Democratic presidential nominee how his tax policies would affect him if he purchased a new plumbing business.
Saying that “Joe the Plumber” wanted some answers, Palin continued: “Senator Obama said he’s somebody who wants to spread the wealth, which means, which means he wants government to take your hard-earned money and dole it out however he sees fit. Now Joe said to him that sounded like socialism. To me it sounds like real bad medicine for an ailing economy. And whatever you call it, Senator Obama will do to those who want to create jobs what shouldn’t be done, and we’re calling him on it.”
In fact, both Palin and McCain have pushed “Joe the Plumber” in campaign speeches in recent days, using the Ohio man as a metaphor to try to promote their economic policies, despite the fact that Wurzelbacher may in fact receive a tax cut under Obama’s tax plan.
In the radio address, McCain didn’t directly call Obama a socialist, but he let the now-famous “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher nearly do it for him. McCain said: “You see, Obama believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that help us all make more of it. Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism.”
Asked why McCain used the word “socialist” in the radio remarks, a spokesman said: “That’s what it is – ‘Spreading the wealth around’ is socialism.”
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