AlterNet: McCain's Big Backfire: Majority of Americans Like the Idea of Spreading the Wealth

[marmar]

McCain's Big Backfire: Majority of Americans Like the Idea of Spreading the Wealth

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted November 1, 2008.

It must come as a surprise to the Republicans that the public favors Obama's style of wealth spreading by a whopping margin.



John McCain and Joe the Plumber are campaigning for Barack Obama, and they don't even know it. The more McCain has ramped up his attacks on Obama as a "spreader of wealth," the more the country has lined up behind the Democrat's plan to spread the wealth. If McCain's economic agenda was a gun and his attacks on Obama's agenda the bullets, the old soldier would have shot both his feet clean off a long time ago.

Watching the GOP's coordinated if increasingly delirious attacks on Obama's economic plan, it's clear that the party is even further out of touch with the America of 2008 than previously imagined. After eight years of establishing and then extending America's lead as the most unequal of all industrialized countries, Republicans thought they could deflect a national groundswell of righteous anger by dusting off and hurling every insult in the conservative arsenal, including old favorites "extremist," "radical," "Marxist" and "socialist." One suspects they are saving "anarchist" and "Hessian" for McCain's last-gasp speech on Monday.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Republican hammer-and-sickle-themed haunted house: Nobody showed. The McCain campaign's attempts to smear Obama as a Trojan donkey for socialistic un-Americanism have belly-flopped, if not backfired. Obama has not only maintained a stable lead under the Republican barrage, he has increased his positives in the traditionally Republican territory of taxes. The final national polls before Tuesday all show a national hunger for national wealth redistribution downward. An Ipsos/McClatchy poll finds that likely voters prefer Obama's tax plan to McCain's by 8 points. Pew says Obama added to his edge on taxes and the economy between mid-September and mid-October by 6 points, jumping from 44 to 39 earlier to 50 to 35. On Oct. 30, Gallup released results showing Americans favor Obama's style of wealth spreading by a whopping 58-to-37 margin.

It appears the nation's sanity and sense of fairness has reasserted itself to wipe the floor with condescending GOP red-baiting. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/105652/mccain%27s_big_backfire%3A_majority_of_americans_like_the_idea_of_spreading_the_wealth/

[Wetzelbill]

1. The close minded GOP don't understand that most Americans

don't subscribe to unmitigated greed they way they do.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Like the concentration of wealth was supposed to be a turn on!

Guess they may not have realized that concentrating is the opposite of spreading.

[HockeyMom]

3. They look at CEO's multi million dollar bonuses alone

and think if I could only have a small portion of that I might be able to afford health insurance for my family.

I am sure people think along those lines. What is wrong with that?

[yurbud]

4. enough people figured out that the GOP thinks of them as not a dinner guest but dinner