Post Debate 'Addendum' ::

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October 16, 2008

Post Debate 'Addendum'

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The title of Janet Daly's piece at the Telegraph piece tells both the storyline of the article and the real take home message from last night's debate: Joe the Plumber was the real star of the third debate:

A few days ago, in what has now become a legendary confrontation, he accused Obama of planning to raise his taxes, thus making it very much more difficult for him to do his bit to expand the economy. In the course of that exchange, Obama made the revelatory comment that he believed that "spreading the wealth around" would help everyone. And there it was: the crucial distinction between those (Democrats) who believe that the wealth created by individuals should be compulsorily redistributed, even if that means limiting the possibilities of creating more of it, and those (Republicans) who feel that it would be better left to the small businesses which will use it to grow and proffer more employment.

As for why Joe the Plumber resonates so strongly with average America, the reason has to do with the fact that we the American people, the average American voter, are - essentially - "Joe the plumber." He is us, and we don't believe in socialism or "wealth redistribution," we believe in the free market system, capitalism, and the individual right to pursue our own dreams and own our rewards for our hard work, take advantage of our willingness to take risks, and to seek the benefits of our talents and abilities.

And AJStrata believes, as I do, that the issue of "Joe the Plumber" is one of two game changers that came out of last night's debate, although I see it as the most important one: (1) this election is now about Joe The Plumber and (2) this election is no longer about Bush:

... The more I read the more I realize something really big happened around this debate that became exposed in this debate (not that the debate caused it to happen). Joe The Plumber is the American voter in the final act of this play. Sarah Palin was the American neighbor down the street who succeeded and is riding to take on Washington, but Joe The Plumber is us - still struggling to get a good slice of the American dream. As long as McCain and Palin stand by Joe in every commercial and stump speech and interview, promising to not raid his earnings to "share the wealth", Obama will lose this election. Nothing else needs to be said because no other issue (birth certificates, past alliances with radicals) means a damn thing to Americans personally! Obama gave the GOP this gift, don't waste it by wasting time on topics that don't connect directly with the lives of the American voter. They will let anyone screw up and make mistakes as long as it doesn't hurt them financially (which is why tying the Dems to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is probably still a good second or third topic).

And borrowing from AJ's update, the WSJ spells out the clear difference between John McCain policies that would foster the continuance of "Joe the plumbers" and Barack Obama policies that would end them - essentially killing the American dream and the very reason for pursuing it:

Neither candidate is offering policies that meet the serious economic moment. But Mr. McCain would let Americans keep more of their own income to ride out the downturn, while Mr. Obama is revealing that his default agenda is to spend money and expand the government.

As the WSJ goes on to point out, John McCain's best hope (and I would add - also America's) now is that millions of Americans share the basic economic common sense of Joe the Plumber (and reject the Marxism of Obama and the teachings he learned so well from the radical Saul Alinsky.

David Limbaugh sees it pretty much the same way: Obama's agenda is nothing less than Marxist, and although socialism and communism have failed everywhere they've been tried in the world, Obama is clearly trying to sneak it upon the American people:

Do you suppose it has registered with class warfare-receptive Obama voters that Obama is deliberately turning the American dream on its head? Could it be any clearer that his message to the middle class is: Don't aspire to achievement, success and wealth because a) it is immoral to have more than others, b) the government will take your wealth away from you and give it to others, and c) why bother to bust your rear end to make more when you can vote yourselves money from the public trough?

[...] Obama let slip his socialist proclivities to Joe the plumber when he denied he wanted to punish wealth and insisted he just wanted to spread the wealth around. Joe was justifiably repulsed by Obama's cavalier attitude toward the American dream.
Democratic commentator Bob Beckel was dismissive of the significance of Obama's outright nod to socialism, saying we've had a progressive tax system since the income tax was initiated. Yes, Bob, and we've had socialists in America since then, too.

But what Beckel did not explain is that at least in those days, the stated purpose of the income tax system was to fund government services, not to redistribute wealth.

It's one thing to say that higher income earners should pay a higher percentage for government services. But Obama makes no pretense of stopping there. He told Joe that he wants to use the tax code to confiscate money from higher income earners and give it to others. But he hasn't been so open about that in the presentation of his fraudulent tax plan.

When Obama says he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, he is dissembling. If 38 percent are already not paying, his tax credits to them amount to transfer payments from higher income earners, which are actually spending increases, not tax cuts, as The Wall Street Journal editors have noted.

Liberals, such as Obama, might deny human nature, but they can't change it. And human nature happens to dictate that people will not produce as much when you confiscate more of what they produce and give it to others. The working wealthy, especially Christians and conservatives, are some of the most generous people in the world, but we're talking about voluntary charitable contributions, not unconstitutionally coerced redistributions.

How many times must history repeat itself before we learn that socialism and communism cannot work.

[...] Socialism and communism have failed everywhere they've been tried in the world, yet die-hard socialists, such as William Ayers, still smarter than God, insist on cramming them down our throats in the name of "fairness." Unreconstructed radicals always say that true socialism hasn't been given a real chance.

Well, if Obama is elected, we may get that chance.