Republican presidential nominee John McCain hammered Democrat Barack Obama on taxes and national security on Thursday on a bus tour across parts of Florida crucial to his hopes of winning on November 4. Trailing in opinion polls both nationally and in many key states, McCain is facing an increasingly difficult path to victory and finds himself racing to defend states that have voted Republican in recent elections.
With less than two weeks before the election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll by Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby. McCain is resting his hopes on instigating a "Joe the Plumber" voter uprising against the better-funded Obama by whipping up populist sentiment over Obama's comment to Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher that raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year would allow Washington to "spread the wealth around."
McCain called that redistribution of income and said it would hurt small businesses responsible for much of the country's jobs. Some people at his rally were waving "Joe the Plumber" T-shirts.
"He's more concerned about using taxes to spread the wealth than creating a tax plan that creates jobs and grows our economy," Arizona Senator McCain told a cheering throng at an Ormond Beach lumber yard. "Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of pie than he is in growing the pie," McCain said.
Illinois Senator Obama says his tax plan would give 95 percent of Americans a tax break. Obama was taking a one-day break from the presidential race to make a personal journey to see his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, ceding a day of campaigning to McCain less than two weeks before the election.
Obama will spend private time in Honolulu on Friday visiting Madelyn Dunham, the woman who helped raise him and who he affectionately calls "Toot" - short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother. The 85-year-old Dunham recently broke her hip and is very ill. Obama said he did not want to repeat the mistake he made with his mother, who died of cancer before he could reach her bedside.
McCain was on a bus tour across Florida's "Interstate 4 corridor," a 12-county section of Central Florida in which he needs a large voter turnout on November 4 to save a state that Republicans have taken in the last two presidential elections. Polls show a neck-and-neck race in Florida.
In Ormond Beach, McCain strongly supported his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who has energised the party's base but has had a difficult introduction to the national scene, getting mixed reviews for a couple of national television interviews. A story in the Politico on Wednesday that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on her wardrobe only added to the negative picture surrounding Palin.