McCain on What a . . . Classic . . . Politician Barack Obama Is

Morrissey at Hot Air has the story:

John McCain continues to improve his message while campaigning through swing states. In Pennsylvania today, McCain used Barack Obama’s support for both the Phillies and the Devil Rays as a revealing moment about Barack Obama the politician. He will say and do anything to get elected, but afterwards …. well:

Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states, but I think I may have detected a little pattern with Senator Obama. It’s pretty simple really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he shows love to the Rays. It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the Plumber after he’s asked a tough question.

McCain didn’t let up on the lessons of Joe the Plumber, either:

After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.” He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie. This explains some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?

Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce income taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.

That may be the best stump-speech explanation I’ve heard yet from McCain about Obamanomics. How do you reduce zero? You start another branch of welfare, and you rob capital from sources that could otherwise create jobs to do it. That won’t grow the economy, but it will expand the dependent class who will then vote to protect the patronage they receive. That’s another version of the Chicago Way.

McCain also included Joe Biden’s latest gaffe as a demonstration of the danger an Obama administration would represent to national security:

This weekend, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response. Forget apparent. We know Senator Obama won’t have the right response.

We’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world’s worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint. He’s been wrong on all of these.

McCain seems to have hit his stride again, thanks to Joe the Plumber and Joe the Leak. It’s a great speech . . .

Ed has the entire transcript of McCain's speech over at Hot Air, BTW.