The S word, again
Posted: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:29 PM by Carrie Dann
From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy
GOFFSTOWN, NH – After nearly a week of dedicating most of his stump speech to Joe the Plumber and
Obama’s promise to “spread the wealth around,”
McCain slightly shifted his focus today to hit Obama harder on his government spending proposals. But before he jumped to the new material, McCain couldn’t forget about Joe entirely.
“Every once in a while, my opponent gives us all a little glimpse of what an Obama presidency would be like in the real world,” McCain said. “And last week his campaign actually found itself on a detour into the real world -- in the driveway of Joe the Plumber.”
Without calling Obama’s plan socialistic himself, McCain prompted the crowd to respond as such by saying that “before government can redistribute wealth, it has to confiscate wealth from those who earned it, and whatever the right word is for that way of thinking,” to which several members of the crowd yelled what they felt the right word was: “socialism.”
On government spending, McCain said that his opponent’s plan requires “150 billion dollars” in new spending, citing amounts of money that Obama has pledged for education, energy, infrastructure and healthcare.
“Does anyone seriously believe that these trillions of dollars are going to come from only the very highest income earners?” McCain asked the crowd of over 2,000 gathered at St. Anselm College. “Even his supporters are skeptical. Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said of these plans, quote, ‘There’s not enough money to do all this stuff.’ An influential newspaper called his claims, quote, ‘neither politically nor economically plausible.’ That critique came from the editorial board of The New York Times, and when Barack Obama loses them you know he's gone too far.”
