Directed against JTP yet again, this time from one of the more usual sneering sources:

SHUSTER: With us now live is Armstrong Williams, he’s a syndicated radio talk show host, and Armstrong, why should anybody take CPAC seriously when it allows Joe the Plumber, invites Joe the Plumber to be one of the featured speakers? Good grief!

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, Joe the Plumber represents a certain constituency out there. He got a lot –

SHUSTER: Right. He represents those who don’t have a proper license with tax liens against them. Does the Republican Party really want Joe the Plumber to be a role model?

Hey, why not? A sizeable cohort of the Obama junta can’t be bothered to pay their taxes except when caught red-handed trying to dodge them, and liberal-media polyps don’t seem to think it matters in the least that the tyrants responsible for implementing the biggest and most expensive power grab in history — with the outrageous taxes to pay for it soon to follow — consider themselves exempt from those same levies.

Of course, it’s a MSDNC hack talking here, so you already know full well his real problem with Joe isn’t tax liens, populism, or anything else; it’s that he dared to question the ineffable wisdom of CommieChrist and left him flustered, stammering, and fully exposed to the stark light of truth propagandists like Shuster worked so hard to keep off him during the campaign.

WILLIAMS: You know, you can make that argument about his legal issues and his issues with the law, but there are people who identify with Joe the Plumber. I’m sure that he would not have been the choice of others but they chose him, they thought the audience wanted to hear him. And you know, the audience will decide whether they want to listen to him or not.

SHUSTER: That was a mistake, wasn’t it?

WILLIAMS: I’m not going to say that was a mistake, that’s their call.

SHUSTER: Armstrong, it’s an easy call, though. CPAC. There are a lot of intellectual conservatives, people who we may have a lot of disagreement over policy issues, but people I respect, who are willing to say it’s a huge mistake for conservatives to make Joe the Plumber a featured speaker at their conference!

Fuck you and your “huge mistakes,” Shuster; we’ll just see about that in good time, pal.

Is anyone out there fool enough to believe that a liberal hack like Shuster would for a moment have the best interests of anyone but his socialist masters in mind anyway — that he regards any prospective “huge mistake” any group of conservatives might make with anything other than purest delight?

Here’s a more general assault on the unspeakably gauche complexion of prole debate and discussion, from a sniffy piece by none other than John Derbyshire:

With reasons for gratitude duly noted, are there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

Well, I can’t really argue with some of that, although I’d say more of the blame for steering the country in the wrong direction actually ought to rest with those who still petulantly insist that voting for a liberal with an “R” instead of a “D” after his name was ever going to result in anything but a liberal’s taking office.

Personally, I stopped listening to Limbaugh regularly myself back during the runup to the 2000 election, when he was shilling tirelessly for Dubya as a “true conservative.” It was plain to everyone but the screaming-fantod Left that he was no such thing, and that his new “compassionate conservatism” was nothing more than the same old big-government liberalism tied up in a nice GOP bow. But here’s where I really part ways with ol’ Derb:

Conservatives have never had, and never should have, a problem with elitism. Why have we allowed carny barkers to run away with the Right?

Gee, I dunno. It’s really puzzling, because politics had always been such a genteel, highbrow, and gentlemanly endeavor before.

And isn’t it funny how elitists of every ideological stripe — Democrats, RINOs, and snooty self-styled intellectuals both Left and Right — can all come together under the banner of their contempt for the common man, and the coarse and unseemly nature of any discourse on how he might prefer to be ruled in which he might have the deplorable temerity to engage?

Like I said: fuck every last man jack of these snobs and squares. And if that’s too rough for the squeamish dweebs, they can grease it up and jam it sideways. Pah. A pox on all their houses, I say.

Update! Chad calls for an Army of Joes. Actually, we already have one. It just needs to wake up and find its voice, and realize its strength. And it damned sure doesn’t need to be patronized, condescended to, dismissed, or plain insulted by anyone who isn’t part of the usual group of suspects who’ve always held their noses while they proclaimed their false devotion to them: progressivists, RINOs, and liberal Democrats.