So Much For Gratitude

Well, presume we give him the benefit of the doubt about ulterior motives, for the sake of argument. Then it's a choice between saying nothing out of gratitude (and, I guess, loyalty) or speaking your mind about how you feel, based on what you have learned. It doesn't trouble me that JtP chose to keep speaking, and I don't think he owes McCain anything per se. JtP was given a spotlight because it served McCain's purposes. He wasn't just doing JtP a "solid."

Hopefully no one throws me under the bus for saying so, but the best description I can think of for JtP is unsophisticated. Such people prefer similar folks. We know well the schism in the GOP between true believers and the more-independent minded folks like McCain. These latter folks wander off the reservation for various reasons, virtually all of which are considered hanging offenses by the folks who style themselves party-liners. We can presume at this point that both Palin and JtP stand with the GOP folks viewing themselves as priests of the real church of conservatism. [Whatever that means. And if I were to veer off course into that debate, I'd start by pointing out that while it means different things to different conservatives, that doesn't stop any of them from acting as though they have a superior understanding of the light and the way.]

I cheerfully acknowledge that there are two sides to the "sophistication" coin, so I hope folks don't presume that I call JtP unsophisticated as a pejorative. I am simply trying to be descriptive. In my mind, there's what you think about various things from a naive and idealistic perspective, and there's what you think about them after years and years of thought and effort and work. I come from a perspective that highly values the ability to evolve one's views based on thought, feedback, changing circumstances, and so on. So I view John McCain's independence and willingness to evolve as a positive. But I understand how it can be seen as corruption and disloyalty, etc., etc.

I'll be surprised if the true believer wing fails to continue to do its utmost to throw McCain under the bus as part of the ongoing postmortem. They must, as it ties closely into their core hypothesis that the party's recent failures are due to insufficient fealty to core principles.

This is how the fearless trek into the wilderness to cull those of insufficient faith works.

In your experience, is it unusual for a candidate who loses an election to get the blame for losing the election?

I don't think Joe ever realized it was about the issue raised and not about him. All in all it was a good thing for the campaign and for the US in general. It did bring focus to one issue: small business and tax burden. It also revealed candidate Obama's "sensibilities".

Of course that's water under the bridge now. What gets done is what's important now. (i.e talk=cheap) I'm still skeptical that President Obama can "restrain" congress but I'm certainly impressed at his focus.

PS He still needs to smile more.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless plumber.

Why should Joe feel gratitude towards McCain in particular? He didn't question Sen. Obama seeking fame, he just wanted to ask a question. The McCain camp then happily jumped on his growing popularity to use him for their own purposes. Suddenly Joe found himself in the spotlight. He didn't seem particularly upset by the spotlight, I suppose, but he probably didn't have any idea what the long-term consequences of the temporary fame might be.

At any rate, the McCain camp did absolutely zero for the benefit of Joe the Plumber; their motives were to help their candidate, not to altruistically benefit Joe. I don't see why Joe would owe them any particular loyalty at all.