Joe The Plumber In Wisconsin

You just knew that getting JtP into a saloon would be good for a few laughs and last night didn't disappoint.

Christopher Magiera, a board member of Americans for Prosperity, got things off to a rollicking start even though he seemed to be off-message. He couldn't quite get to a violation of Godwin's Law from where he started. Described by the Wausau Herald as a local political activist, Magiera said

[that] he saw a "Stalinization of America" taking place and that "the only
thing that separates Stalinist Russia from what we have in Washington right now
are the re-education and death camps."

Apparently, no one in the crowd, estimated at whopping 75, actually knew enough about Stalinist Russia to call him on his comparison. But then it was time for the main act to take the center ring. Joe the Pretend Plumber said in an interview

[that] a recent Time magazine report that he had left the
Republican Party was false.

“No, that’s not true,” he said. “I said I was thinking about it, but I
did not do it. Right now, they don’t represent me as a Republican. I’m still
thinking about it, to a degree, because we need to promote America — not
Republicans, not Democrats.”

But the big news was that Joe has moved on to calling for vigilante justice and lynch mobs.

Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked,
"Why hasn't he been strung up?"

It's as if he was at one with Daddio who has taken to calling for a shooting war over healthcare reform. Even the reliably conservative Herald has had nearly enough of the media-created Joe-Monster.

[ ] he glosses over facts. Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the
Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't
work. They knew communism doesn't work." The Constitution predates the origins of socialism by nearly 100 years.

His fifteen minutes long ago used up, Wurzelbacher needs to be progressively more outrageous just to remain in the spotlight. He has become the Republican's very own Sandra Bernhard, a once-upon-a-time minor celebrity with an act that was never very much fun to begin with trying to play out the string.

Capper has more on the conservative disarray in Marathon County. They've become a sort of joke but they're still looking to Pennsylvania for punchlines.

Updated after Tomah on Friday:

Joe says states should be able to ban smoking and that he'd rather be fishing than trundling about with the AFP sideshow.

The once famous Wurzelbacher, technically neither Joe nor Plumber, put in an appearance at Ed Thompson's TeePee Supper Club (Motto: Great prime rib. Common stereotypes) for another 70 people. That put his crowds at a total of 150 for Wausau and Tomah together. That's Walker territory, there but a far cry from the hundreds that saw him when he was stumping with Grampy.