McCain hammers Obama on Florida bus tour

By Steve Holland

SARASOTA, Florida (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee John McCain took his "Joe the Plumber" economic message on a bus ride across Florida on Thursday, accusing Democrat Barack Obama of backing a tax plan that would endanger the teetering U.S. economy.

McCain's broadside, delivered at stops throughout central Florida, prompted Obama to fire back that McCain's economic proposals would give corporations a tax break for shipping jobs overseas -- a "Wall Street first, Main Street last" strategy.

Trailing in opinion polls both nationally and in many key states, McCain, an Arizona senator, 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 November 4 election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll by Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby. Other polls showed some signs of a tightening race.

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 Obama's plan a redistribution of income and said it would hurt small businesses that he said have been doing some of the only hiring at a time when claims for jobless benefits rose by a larger than expected 15,000 last week.

"Senator Obama may say he's going to soak the rich but it's the middle class who are going to get wet," McCain said in Sarasota.

McCain strongly supported his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has energized 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 on the Politico Web site on Wednesday that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on her wardrobe only added to the negative picture surrounding the self-styled hockey mom Palin.

"Can you believe the way she's being attacked? It's really remarkable," McCain said to raucous cheers at a rally in Sarasota. "I can tell you what, she's far more qualified than Joe the Biden" -- a reference to Obama's vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

Asked about the clothes, McCain told a group of Florida reporters on his bus that she needed clothes at the time and that they would be donated to charity, according to WFLA television.

In Ormond Beach, McCain said it was critical to keep people facing foreclosure in their homes.

He criticized the Bush administration for not buying troubled mortgages to allow homeowners facing foreclosure to get a better interest rate on their loans as part of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. He complained particularly about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

"Why isn't the secretary of the Treasury ordering them to do that?" he said.

Obama was taking a one-day break from the presidential race to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, ceding a day of campaigning to McCain less than two weeks before the election.