Patrick Ruffini writing at The Next Right:

It could have been like any other of the hundreds of pieces I had seen in the last few months touting Joe’s latest exploits. Joe the Plumber — a one or two day campaign gimmick — has become a poster boy for conservatism. To say that the McCain campaign milked Joe Wurzelbacher’s story and then some would be the understatement of the century. Now, conservatives are making him a foreign war correspondent and he is sure to be feted at CPAC — so I’m sure to get a certain amount of grief for what I’m writing now.

If you want to get a sense of how unserious and ungrounded most Americans think the Republican Party is, look no further than how conservatives elevate Joe the Plumber as a spokesman. The movement has become so gimmick-driven that Wurzelbacher will be a conservative hero long after people have forgotten what his legitimate policy beef with Obama was.

Joe the Plumber is a gimmick – period. The conservatives keep touting him out like some poster child for their movement, while rest of America views him as a joke. But like everything else with the Republican Party, they expect the American people to drink their Kool aide and idolize Joe. Again – the Republican Party is banking on America being a nation of idiots. When you bank against America you will lose, and if the Republicans want to regain any ground in our nation they need to realize that. Using gimmicks like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Joe the Plumber won’t do it.

And I want to repeat. Yes I am a liberal, but I am also a realist. I realize that one of the most basic needs for America’s survival is to have more than one party. The Republicans need to get their act together in order to keep that necessity, or our nation needs to go ahead and spur another party to rise. The lack of intellectual honesty in the rank of Republican leadership is not only a risk to the Republican Party, but also to the American political system.