No. they did none of that. "Joe the plumber" did all that himself by making himself the willing tool of the right by going to an obama rally and challenging him with outright lies...
Actually, Joe made a statement to Obama and Obama, in response, admitted that he would be raising Joe's taxes. As such, you really can't say that Joe was speaking "outright lies."
Furthermore, even if we were to accept that Joe was wrong about Obama's plan, the fact still remains that an ordinary blue-collar citizen, who chose to exercise his First Amendment right and disagree with a presidential candidate, is being smeared and hounded by, not only members of the candidate's campaign, but the very "free press" that claims to be a guardian of the first amendment.
You and I both know that the intent here is to send a message to any ordinary person that he or she had better not question Obama's policies.
It's classic Chicago-style thug politics, on a national level.
