Joe the Plumber

It's hard to tell exactly when John McCain's campaign began to implode - I can only think that it just hasn't been well run since the very beginning. Back during the primaries, John appeared to be well out of the running - he was flat broke at one point and had to resort to riding his bus around instead of flying because he didn't have the funds.

The newest gaffe by the McCain campaign involves Joe the Plumber - an Ohio man who chatted with Barack Obama about taxes while waiting in a line for a meet-and-greet. It was picked up on TV and John McCain jumped on the incident at the last Presidential debate. They should have checked out the guy before they used him as the centerpiece of the debate.

I don't have sources for this yet (I'll add them later if I run across them), but CNN reported this morning that Joe the Plumber only makes about $40K per year and probably can't afford the $250K a year business that he told Barack he was going to buy, and Joe is not even a licensed plumber.

But the real kicker came from Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog, where he reports the following - it's a real kick-in-the-ass for McCain...

John McCain did great tonight in the debate. But every time John mentioned “Joe the Plumber,” some of us in the campaign banged our heads against the wall. If Steve Schmidt had any hair left, I hear he would have been pulling it out tonight. He reportedly screamed at John’s debate prep team tonight (out of earshot of reporters, of course). “You idiots - he’s related to Charles Keating… of the Keating Five scandal!” They thought they had a real live Joe Six-Pack who’s spurned Barack Obama’s tax plan. But what they forgot to do was check on Joe Wurzelbacher’s background.

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.