Joe the Plumber?

Some campaigns are just not very good at background checking, or don't care. Found this over at DU.

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.

Does any of this make Joe the Plumber a bad guy? Of course not. But on a night when McCain accused Obama of guilt-by-association, this isn’t going to look good for us. Hello, but on a night when John goes full bore on William Ayers and dodges a bullet by Obama not mentioning Keating Five, the press is going to bring it back front and center by midday tomorrow once they delve deeper into the most popular plumber in America.

This might remind you of the Paris Hilton scandal - where one side of the McCain campaign attacked her in an ad, not realizing that her family were huge donors. I was the first to warn the campaign of the perils of miscommunication, and that story flared for a week.

http://www.eisenstadtgroup.com/2008/10/16/joe-the-plumb...

With 19 days to go, it's just going to get worse. At least it's not boring.

And so it goes.
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