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Sure, Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher may have seemed to have stabbed the man who made him famous in the back with his comments the other day that John McCain had "ruined my life."

But he went on Sean Hannity's show last night to explain that he was taken out of context -- he was really only talking about how the media had ruined his former life by making it impossible to go back to. "The housewife" didn't want him coming home with TV crews, he said.

But then he threw John McCain -- whose candidacy he avidly supported by going on the trail with him, while McCain cited him in every stump speech he made for a month -- right under the Tea Party Express anyway:

Wurzelbacher: Now, like I said, it gave me the opportunity to get out there and ask Americans to get educated on the facts of what's going on -- get informed about the decisions they're making and the people that they're voting in to elect them. And uh, you know, I went around with John McCain because it was the lesser of two evils, to be quite frank. Ahm, you know, I'm not afraid to say that.

John McCain exactly doesn't represent true conservatism -- he does represent the Republicans, but not true conservatism.

Hannity: Well, he certainly frustrates me -- I battled with him on campaign finance, on immigration reform, the Gang of 12, we've had a number of issues. Do you now not support him? He's up for re-election in the Senate. Are you supporting him?

Wurzelbacher: Ah, absolutely not. I mean, that's what the Tea Party movement is against. You know, John McCain is of Washington, he's a career politician, he's had plenty of -- ample opportunity to fix things and get things done, and yet here we are. I mean, he's just the face of what's going on in Washington -- and I'm not necessarily trying to pick on John McCain, I mean, we need to get rid of most of those guys that are in there that are career politicians.

Ah, nothing like conservative ethics in action: Bogus talking points before basic decency.

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Bill Maher is asked if he's worried that making fun of Sarah Palin will just play into her image as a victim and make her more appealing to voters. Maher doesn't think so and says anyone who is a fan of hers is unreachable anyway. He also says what you seldom here in the media which is that her following is not necessarily that large and he thinks there is no way the Republicans will ever nominate her for the presidency.

When asked why McCain picked Palin without vetting her properly for V.P. Maher reminds King that McCain has always been reckless and about all the planes he crashed and should have been grounded for but wasn't because of who his father was IMHO. Larry King plays dumb with Maher on the subject. Maybe we should ask Larry King to give this a watch where Jon Stewart had a bit of fun with McCain on the topic -- Daily Show: "John McCain: Reformed Maverick.

And in case anyone wants to nit pick about The Daily Show's bit of fun with the topic, here's Fact Check's post on just how many planes McCain actually "crashed" and how many were his fault. I don't think it takes away from Bill's point that he was a hot dog.

Maher also takes issue with King's assertion that the Religious right "made" McCain do anything and forced him to choose her. As he said, McCain was running the show, and ultimately it was his decision.

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Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd in another one of their false equivalency arguments throw Grover Norquist, unions and the netroots into the same batch and claim they control the Congress. And Chuck Todd interprets Evan Bayh's speech today on why he's not running for office again to say he was saying there's no room in the Senate for "centrists". "Centrist" is nothing but code for another corporate controlled politician. Since Senate millionaires club is made up of little else but, I don't know what the hell he's talking about here. It makes absolutely no sense.

The activists might get a response from these politicians when it comes to their campaign rhetoric, but at the end of the day their donors are who they're answering to when they govern and Matthews and Todd know it. Matthews of course will never let that stop him from getting his shots in on the netroots though. Todd also seems to be giving Norquist a lot more credit for his shift to the right than he deserves since Norquist has been around for ages pushing Republicans on these tax purity tests, even though he acknowledges the shift has come with a primary challenge from the right winger Hayworth.

MATTHEWS: OK, let’s talk turkey here.

CILLIZZA: ... ran for president...

MATTHEWS: Let’s go to Chuck Todd on the big picture here. Just a year or so ago, Arlen Specter of my state quit the Republican Party, saying there’s no room in it for centrist politicians like himself.

CHUCK TODD: Right.

MATTHEWS: Is this a sign that there’s no room in the Democratic Party for centrist politicians like Evan Bayh? He seemed to be saying that today.

TODD: No, I think what Evan Bayh is saying is there’s no room in the Senate for centrist politicians, period. You know, the fact is he said he doesn’t love Congress. It was an amazing, blunt attack on Congress. You know, frankly, there’s 70 percent of Americans agree with him on that statement. Nobody loves Congress right now. Very few seem to like what’s going on there.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Eugene Robinson about whether the Republicans rank hypocrisy on claiming they want bipartisanship while being the party of no, co-sponsoring bills that they later vote against and claiming credit for the good legislation they voted against is ever going to make them embarrassed enough about their actions to get them to stop. As Rachel notes if they are going to continue this, they should not be taken seriously because they do not care about policy. They care about playing politics.

As John noted, even the American public is getting tired of the filibuster if they have the concept explained to them since so much of the public doesn't know what the word means. Whether they ever pay a price at the polls is another matter. I don't know why the Democrats haven't adopted the same language the Republicans used when they were in the same boat -- "up or down vote". The public understands that and it gives the largely lazy press a sound byte to play instead of them being allowed to act like needing sixty votes to get anything passed in the Senate is normal, Rachel being one of the few exceptions.

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This isn't the first time Tea Party organizers have announced their intentions regarding the Republican Party. And it probably won't be the last.

But it's nonetheless well worth documenting that Judson Phillips, the organizer of last week's National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, went on Fox News yesterday with Gretchen Carlson and said it quite clearly:

Phillips: And part of it's gonna end up -- where this Tea Party movement goes, is partially gonna be dependent on the Republican Party. If they're going to keep pushing people like Dede Scozzafaza or Mark Kirk on us, the Tea Party movement is not gonna vote for somebody just because they have an R behind their name. We don't like people like John McCain. We want good conservatives in office.

And if the Republican Party is not going to help us do that, then in 2011 there's probably going to be a pretty big push to set up the Tea Party as a separate political party. I don't think that's the best idea in the world, I'd really prefer to see us take over the Republican Party. But there's a lot of pressure from our people right now because we want conservatives in office.

Bet that works out about as well as NY-23 did.

A C&Ler named mc sent in this very good e-mail about the causes of the financial meltdown we've just witnessed and the people who helped cause it.

I have almost 40 years of experience as a retail banker and financial services provider. I opened, managed and served as country head in Spain, Korea, Canada and the US. I would like to contribute comments and blogs.

It is not so difficult to find the people who should be held accountable for the financial meltdown of 2009. It seems, however, from 2001 until the present day nobody tries to find anyone responsible for anything.

There are 2 people in government that bear the bulk of the responsibility for our financial meltdown as well as the presidents of all banks that participated in the approval of mortgages with substandard credit criteria and the packaging and selling of such mortgages as asset backed securities. Additionally, all of these banks had, or should have had, senior risk asset management committees who were equally responsible. In each case they understood the risks and didn’t care as long they increased compensation for themselves and their company

As for the politicians, 2 of them bear the primary responsibility of these bankrupting financial policies. We need look no further than John McCain’s financial advisor Phil Gramm. Gramm, on Dec. 15, 2000, snuck into a congressional bill an act which prevents the government from regulating investment banks’ credit swaps. Gramm is the one who called Americans whiners and told us that the crisis was in our heads. McCain considered him for the position of Secretary of the Treasury.

Equally responsible for our economic crises was the SEC chairman (Christopher Cox), who changed a key regulation in 2004. Under pressure from those who wanted to please their campaign contributing Wall Street buddies the SEC approved a measure that let investment banks lend out 30 times the amount of capital they had backing up their loans. Before 2004 they could only lend out 12 times the amount of capital.

A solution to the banking meltdown that would prevent it from happening again would be:

1) Reinstate the regulation of CDSs and CDOs by the SEC (assumes increasing head count & improving the quality of staff).
2) Reinstate the 12 to 1 leverage ratio.
3) Require increased capital by product where the riskier assets require more capital reserves
4) Create a regulation that requires each sale of packaged assets by a bank or investment broker to provide some percentage of recourse to the purchaser.
5) Make the board of directors have fiduciary responsibly to stock holders and face fines and civil charges

There are others that share a lot of the blame too, like Bernanke, and no doubt he could name them too. But this is right on: The conservative mania for deregulation -- they like to call it "small government" -- is the root cause of our economic meltdown.

And Sarah and the Tea Partiers are still trying to sell us on the idea that more of the same is what we need. Because, you know, a nice PCB cocktail topped off with a cigar is just what you need to cure cancer.

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Pat Buchanan unleashed his inner Tea Partier yesterday on Hardball, telling Chris Matthews that he would campaign for Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth over John McCain in their Arizona primary race. Hayworth, you may recall, recently voiced support for the Birthers on the same show:

MATTHEWS: Where are you on McCain versus Hayworth?

BUCHANAN: If I‘m out in Arizona, I would vote for J.D. Hayworth, who is a friend of mine and a conservative. And if he lost, I would vote for John McCain.

MATTHEWS: OK, we know where you stand.

Joan Walsh took him to task for it:

WALSH: We absolutely know where you stand. He‘s a birther. He‘s an extremist. Thank you, Pat.

The "Birther" matter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hayworth. Back in 2006, en route to losing his congressional seat, Hayworth tried to revive Henry Ford's program of "Americanism," which you may recall was actually a code word for anti-Semitic eliminationism; it was also a favorite program promoted avidly by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Hayworth lost that race, in no small part because of voters were repelled by his lame denials about the "Americanization" program.

Of course, none of this would bother the author of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, would it?

But because he's still our avuncular Uncle Pitchfork, he of course resorted to the standard retort of conservatives when confronted with the realities of the extremists in their midst:

BUCHANAN: This is why you lose—do you know why you lose these people? Because you show contempt for them. You call them birthers. You call them names. I‘m talking about the people, the Tea Party people. All they want, Joan, is respect. And you liberals never give it to them. You call them all names. No wonder they go over to the Republican party.

Walsh then took Buchanan apart:

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Colbert ripped into McCain's obvious hypocrisy that contradicted his own statements from 2006:

MCCAIN: My opinion is shaped by the view of the leaders of the military. The reason why I supported the policy to start with is because General Colin Powell, who was then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the one that strongly recommended we adopt this policy in the Clinton administration. I have not heard General Powell or any of the other military leaders reverse their position, just like when on other issues, that people are expert and knowledgeable of, I rely on their opinion. But this is unique. These military leaders are responsible for the very lives of the men and women under their command, and that's why I am especially guided, to a large degree, by their views.

Cut ahead to 2010 and those same leaders are all calling for a repeal of an outdated policy. But John McCain remains fixed and immovable, the consummate panderer. McCain's someone who has somehow managed to get away with this crap for thirty years, mainly I suspect because those in the traditional media do not do their job, leaving it up to Colbert, Stewart and a handful of others.

We haven't heard a peep from the Commandant of the Coast Guard, the Chief of Naval Operations, Cap'n Crunch, Major Garrett, Sgt. Slaughter, Lt. Dan, 'Private Practice,' or Col. Sanders.

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Of course, by the time Election Day 2008 rolled around, most of us were well acquainted with just how "mavericky" a Republican John McCain really was: If there was an issue he could show his "independence" on, he'd leap at it; but the end result was always to toe the right-wing line.

So McCain has had it on display this week in his assaults on the Obama administration for working to overturn the military's odious "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy for gays and lesbians in the military.

First, it may be helpful to recall John McCain on the campaign trail in 2006:

And I understand the opposition to it, and I‘ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.

Then watch him last night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox show:

McCain: I respect the views of Admiral Mullen, who said it was his individual opinion, but we have not heard from the rest of the military leadership. And I'd be very interested in hearing from our military on this issue.

... I have always said that I believe 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is working, and I believe it is.

Yup, that's John McCain, Professional Calvinball Player. How swiftly those goalposts move!

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McCain wants to make sure no one in the Congress quits paying attention to that propoganda machine out there because his constituents are watching it.

Van Susteren: President Obama said to the Democrats today that they need to stop paying attention to cable news and we didn’t get singled out in particular this time.

McCain: I don’t know they were referring to.

Van Susteren: I think he actually said CNN and Fox News. But he said they need to go out and pay attention to their constituents. Is this President paying attention to his constituents and are those members of the House, both parties paying attention to constituents or not?

McCain: Well, first of all, I advise my friends to go ahead and watch the cable news because our constituents are. Listen…

Van Susteren: I’ll take that plug.

McCain: Yeah. Listen I’ll walk down the street in Phoenix and they’ll say “I saw you on Greta” you know. They may say lousy job but they’ll say “I saw you on Greta”. People watch and people get a lot of their news and information and opinion from cable news. So I would advise members of Congress just the opposite because we want to know what information that your constituents are getting.

Second of all it’s always the way that we have, politicians do in all due respect—shoot the messenger. Shoot the messenger, don’t worry about the message. And the message is that we’re hearing that they’re sick and tired of business as usual. Some polls have the approval rating of Congress in single digits and that you get down to blood relatives and paid staffers. The message I think may come in this November and it might be the most interesting political election that you and I have seen.

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Mitch McConnell is asked why seven of the Republicans who co-sponsored the Conrad-Gregg fiscal commission turned around and voted against it. McConnell says he now wants a spending reduction commission because heaven forbid we can't have them considering any tax hikes for the rich. Leave it to Republicans to take a bad idea and make it worse.

KING: Well, let's talk about your side of the equation. Robert Gibbs just complained about it and the president mentioned it in his Saturday radio address. He says there was a proposal. It was sponsored by one Democrat and one Republican. It would create a commission that would spend a few months studying how can we cut federal spending, maybe even propose tax increases; find some way to reduce the federal budget deficit. Now, it then failed last week on a vote in the Senate. And here's the president's complaint.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: This past week, 53 Democrats and Republicans voted for this commission in the Senate, but it failed when seven Republicans who had cosponsored this idea in the first place suddenly decided to vote against it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, we want to show on our screen the seven Republicans who were cosponsors but then withdrew their cosponsorship and voted against it: the Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, John McCain of Arizona, Robert Bennett of Utah.

If this was such a good idea that they would cosponsor it -- this is what comes up, Senator McConnell, in my travels all the time. People say, why do they always just play politics in Washington? Is this just politics, as the president says, or if it was the same proposal six months ago when they cosponsored it, what was wrong with it last week when a Democratic president wanted it?

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So this is the GOP's Great White Hope. Oy.

Fox thinks so highly of its new "analyst" that it brought her on twice last night to "analyze" President Obama's speech, once before and then again afterward with Sean Hannity. In FoxNewsLand, "analyze" means "bash Democrats."

Of course, Palin wasn't speaking for the GOP -- she was speaking for herself, as usual. She claimed to be speaking for the long list of empty homilies she constantly recites -- "freedom", "free enterprise", "American people" -- that are obviously little more than rhetorical symbols to hold up and flash so that everyone thinks you're speaking.

But this is all part of the program to build her up as the GOP's 2012 tea-partying candidate. And this was even worse than Bobby Jindal's self-evisceration last February.

Fox News and Roger Ailes think they're building a candidate with this process. Looks to me like they're building the foundation for a monumental wipeout for the GOP. Hey, couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

What struck me was the bigger problem Republicans are going to have in the next couple of elections: Their activist base is demanding that they refuse to compromise with Democrats. But the larger public wants them to cooperate. So which will it be?

The Tea Party folks like Palin are proceeding full steam ahead with their "purity test."

"It's the difference between success and defeat," Bopp said. "It's counterproductive for us to moderate our conservative message. ... We nominated the moderate's poster child, John McCain, for president. It's a prescription for defeat. What we have to do is be faithful to our conservative principles, and when we do we will win."

Palin was obviously on the side of the non-compromising Tea Partiers. In her interview with Hannity, she insisted: "No, we don't want to just chill a little bit and cool a little bit on his health-care plan. We want the thing killed!"

In other words, she was following the GOP prescription on health-care reform to date: "Our way or the highway!"

But all you have to do is look at the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll [PDF file] to see that there's a problem with this:

7b. Do you generally approve or disapprove of the way that Republicans in Congress are handling the issue of health care reform?

Approve ............................... 26
Disapprove ............................ 64
Not sure................................ 10

What polls have consistently shown is that independent voters are angry because they believe both Republicans and Democrats need to set aside the partisanship and work together to get things done effectively in Congress. And they can see that Republicans have been completely unwilling to compromise or work with Democrats in any kind of constructive fashion.

Moreover, what the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palins out there are making plain is that they have no intention of setting aside the partisanship. It's their way or the highway.

No doubt the Tea Party movement is going to be installing a broad slate of Republican candidates in the coming election; indeed, it's looking like every Republican candidate on the planet is going to be at least paying lip service to their demands for purity.

So when the elections come around, all anyone will need to ask them is a simple question:

"Will you be willing to make compromises with Democrats and President Obama in order to effectively solve the nation's problems?"

If they answer yes, they're screwed with the Tea Party crowd. If they answer no, they're screwed with the rest of the voters.

Knowing Republicans, they will try to have it both ways. It will be up to the rest of us not to let them get away with it.

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Looks like Grandpa McCain has got himself a birther challenger to run against in the Arizona Republican Senate primary race. Given Hayworth's ties to Jack Abramoff and the PAC payments made to his wife, it looks like he's counting on the voters of Arizona to have short memories if he hopes to get elected.

MATTHEWS: Most people will look at this race as John McCain being a -- somewhat of a middle-of-the-road conservative, I guess a mainstream conservative, and you as a bit further right than him. I most people will look at that.

Are you as far right as the Birthers? Are you one of those that believes the president should have to prove he`s a citizen of the United States and not an illegal immigrant? Are you that far right?

HAYWORTH: Well, gosh, we all had to bring our birth certificates to show we were who we said we were and we were the age we said we were to play football in youth sports. Shouldn`t we know exactly that anyone who wants to run for public office is a natural-born citizen of the United States, and is who they say they are?

Let me pause and make another point, because I`ve read --

MATTHEWS: No, I`m reading your letter that says the president should go back and get his birth certificate from the governor of Hawaii. You dated this November 6th, 2000. I`m just asking, do you stand by this letter? Should the governor of Hawaii produce evidence that the president is one of us, an American? Do you think that`s a worthy pastime for the governor of Hawaii right now?

HAYWORTH: No, look --

MATTHEWS: Should she do it?

HAYWORTH: I`m just saying, the president should come forward with the information. That`s all. Why must we depend on the governor of Hawaii?

MATTHEWS: OK.

Jonathan Martin reports in The Politico that the Bush-bashing policy has not worked for the Democrats so they are abandoning it.

After three consecutive losses in statewide races, some top Democrats are questioning a tactic aimed at boosting the party’s candidates in each of those contests: Bush-bashing.

Running as much against the Bush White House as he was running against Sen. John McCain, Barack Obama easily carried Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts in 2008.

Bashing Bush in local races will not help if it doesn't emanate from the White House. Axelrod never made it a priority to attack conservatism and George Bush or Ronald Reagan and the country was primed for it. They did mention that Obama inherited this mess from Bush, but they missed a monumental chance to shake conservative principles for years to come, had Barack Obama actually attacked not just Bush but conservatism and called it (rightly so) a complete failure, beginning from the day he decided to run for president.

And then he could have pilloried them the entire time, both in the campaign and even after he took office. Reagan blamed liberals and big government constantly for his early failures, and it worked for him. Bush followed suit and bashed Clinton, but for some reason they didn't find it appealing.

The country witnessed a complete meltdown under George Bush except for the very wealthy, but if you never make the case on a national level, Americans will soon forget about him and blame the person that is in charge because their lives are no better. In reality, it takes years to dig out of the kind of economic collapse we just witnessed, if at all.

Democrats said that invoking Bush’s name doesn’t have the same impact now, in part for a fairly obvious reason: He’s not in charge anymore.

And the anger toward the political establishment that helped lift Obama and so many Democratic candidates in 2008 has now been transferred to the party in power.

If President Obama and his staff had made Bush bashing -- and calling out conservatism -- a priority, it would have been a potent weapon, because they had the truth on their side. Instead, it was another lost opportunity and now it falls to bloggers to make the case that conservatism is an ideology that doesn't succeed. It's never worked, and it never will work. Conservatives like to forget that Ronald Reagan raised taxes because he had to. If he didn't he would have been a single-term president.

Flashback via NPR:

ROBERTS: Well, it's always politically difficult for Democrats when they are dealing with an issue like terrorism. It remained the Republican's only winning issue through most of President Bush's second term, and it's a particular problem for a Democrat who hasn't served in the military.

It's her world and she lives in it. And you don't you.
Plus you better not dare take a ride into her Village.

DONALDSON: One third of that majority is on a government health program. I'm on Medicare. People who've been in the military are on a government health program. And yet the Republicans were able the make the idea that being on a government health program is terrible.

ROBERTS: Well, that's what I can't get over, is how the Democrats...

DONALDSON: Absurd.

ROBERTS: ... and the White House lost control of the message. I mean, that to me is phenomenal. After doing as well as they did in that campaign, they -- they let this public option -- nobody had ever heard of a public option. Suddenly it became the Holy Grail. You know, it's absurd. They should have just been out there day after day saying, "Thirty more million people insured, and you don't have pre-existing conditions on coverage."

Now I agree with her about screaming for the thirty million people who have no coverage and all, but poll after poll after poll shows that Americans love the idea of a public option. Even Scott Brown voters in Massachusetts love the public option, but not in Cokie's world.

Cokie also thinks that Obama should call John McCain and his crew into action and join the good fight because then he could embarrass them.

DOWD: ... he's going to have to say, "I embrace this. We went off a bit over the course of the last year, but I want to bring a bipartisan solution to the problems of America."

ROBERTS: He needs to call on them, you know, call them to action and ask them to be in it together for the country, you know, so that they look unpatriotic if they're not.

In Cokie's world, President Obama never reached out to republicans after he was sworn in.

In the third week of his transition to power, President-elect Barack Obama is working to build a cordial relationship with Republicans by seeking guidance on policy proposals, asking for advice on appointments and hoping to avoid perceptions of political arrogance given the wide margins of his victory. Obama has made calls to Republican leaders, and he dispatched Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, to meet with them on Capitol Hill.

Maybe she forgot. It happens:

For now, the Republican strategy is to praise President Obama and aim their fire at the House Democratic leadership. "It was very impressive that he came to the Congress and met with us. He was certainly very forthright," said Michigan Republican Dave Camp.

It could be that she was napping he entire month of January, 2009.

Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.
{}
It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Maybe she went to Hawaii for a vacation back then and didn't see Obama court the Queen of America, Olympia Snowe.

Or maybe, just maybe she's a blithering idiot?

Rep. Mike Pence, chair of the House Republican Conference, said Tuesday that President Obama had accepted an invitation to address GOP members of Congress at the group's retreat later this month.

"House Republicans are grateful that the President of the United States has accepted our invitation to meet with the Republican Conference later this month," Pence said in a statement released by his office. "House Republicans look forward to presenting the president with our proposals to protect our nation, create jobs, control federal spending, lower the cost of health care, achieve energy independence and strengthen families."

The House Republican Conference is slated to meet in Baltimore Jan. 28-30.

Being bipartisan and reaching out has really helped the president so far. Thanks Cokie.