'Joe the Plumber' tour

24 Oct 2008, 9:00 am   -   Source: AFP
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Republican presidential candidate John McCain holds a bag of Florida oranges during a campaign stop at Parkesdale Farms in Plant City. (Getty Images)

Republican presidential candidate John McCain holds a bag of Florida oranges during a campaign stop at Parkesdale Farms in Plant City. (Getty Images)

John McCain meets a lumber merchant, a dentist, a Puerto Rican restauranteur and a fruit stand owner during his bus tour.
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John McCain cast himself as the defender of small business and American values as he struggled to overtake rival Barack Obama's lead in the polls with 12 days left in the epic US presidential election.

For the second week since Obama's chance encounter with an Ohio plumber worried about the Democrat's tax plans, the Republican senator hammered at his rival's assertion that everyone is better off if you "spread the wealth around".

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McCain was meeting a lumber merchant, a dentist, a Puerto Rican restauranteur and a fruit stand owner during his "Joe the Plumber" bus tour through the battleground state of Florida amid a national economic downturn.

The now-famous Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio has not yet appeared with McCain, but the campaign is holding him up as a symbol of the hopes and dreams of all Americans who own a business or, like Joe, dream of doing so one day.

McCain warned voters that if Obama raised taxes on small businesses making more than 250,000 dollars, it would "kill jobs" and "comes at the worst possible time for America."

"Senator Obama wants to raise taxes and restrict trade," said McCain at a rally in an Ormond Beach lumber yard. "The last time America did that in a bad economy it led to the Great Depression."

McCain noted that small businesses had managed to create around 300,000 jobs, even as the broader economy lost more than 700,000 jobs so far this year.

"We're talking to small business people all over the state of Florida and all over American and we've got to restore their hopes and dreams for American because that's the basis of our economy," he said after lunch with Hispanic entrepreneurs in Orlando.

"My commitment to the small business owners here is I will not quote feel the need to quote spread their wealth around. I want them to keep their wealth and create jobs."

McCain said he was "confident" he could turn the economy around with his plan to cut taxes, decrease spending, invest in alternative energy and prop up the housing market by buying up bad mortgages.

"We need to win on November 4 and we're going to win Florida and bring realchange to Washington, DC," he told the Ormond Beach rally.

A new sheaf of opinion polls in battleground states by Quinnipiac University cast sharp doubt on McCain's prospects.

Obama led his Republican rival in Florida by 49 to 44 percent, compared to a 51-43 percent lead in the last survey October 1, and in Pennsylvania by 53-40 percent, compared to 54-39 percent previously.

McCain lost ground in Ohio -- often the decisive state in presidential elections -- where Obama leads 52-38 percent, expanding his lead of 50-42 percent at the beginning of this month.

No candidate has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of these three states in the US electoral college.

"To overcome Senator Obama's lead in Ohio, Senator McCain would have to get virtually every voter who remains undecided plus almost all of the Obama supporters who said they still might change their minds," said Quinnipiac's assistant director of polling Peter Brown.
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