Last week, Meghan McCain responded to Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s claim that he doesn’t want “queers…anywhere around my children.” “Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass,” she said. “He should stick to plumbing.” Not taking her advice to “stick to plumbing,” Wurzelbacher showed up at an “Average Joes, Powerful Voices” event in Greenville, WI yesterday to speak to those protesting “taxes and government spending.” But it appeared that he agreed, at least in part, with Meghan McCain’s criticism:

Wurzelbacher described himself as a “dumb plumber” who nevertheless could understand the Constitution. His themes and complaints in a 13-minute speech were similar to those voiced by speakers before and after him in the two-hour-plus event. He criticized wasteful government spending, lack of accountability, the disconnect between Christian values and politics, and political correctness.

“Washington has no idea what’s going on here or anywhere else,” Joe the Plumber said in an interview after the event. “So we need to govern ourselves more and go back to state rights.” Seeming to then take issue with McCain’s (and his own) characterization, he also criticized those who paint him as a “bad person” or “some ignorant red-neck who doesn’t have anything to say about anything.” “[It's] not true you know,” he said. “I’m very educated, I know what I’m talking about, I know the facts.”

The day before the White House Correspondents dinner, Jamie Kirchick interviewed Meghan McCain for Out, largely focusing on her outspoken support of gay rights. During the interview, McCain took a crack at a man her father made famous during last year’s presidential campaign, Joe the Plumber:

Yet even as the balance begins to shift, the old guard is still yapping in the foreground. Shortly before McCain sat for this interview, Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he complained about “queers” and declared, “I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.” Unprompted, McCain rails against the man her father’s presidential campaign touted as an American everyman and made a showpiece in the weeks before the election. “Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing.”

Wurzelbacher later followed that comment up by saying, “Men kissing each other…it throws me off.” “It’s not something I want around my family,” he told a local ABC affiliate in Toledo, OH.

In an address to the Log Cabin Republicans yesterday, Meghan McCain said that her recent public disagreements with conservative figures including Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham have reinforced her belief that most “old school Republicans” are “scared shitless” of the future. McCain said that the Republican party must challenge “the mold and the notions of what being a Republican means” by embracing what she called being a “progressive Republican“:

So tonight, I am proud to join you in challenging the mold and the notions of what being a Republican means. I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people’s lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

Despite the fact that the Log Cabin Republicans advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian interests in the Republican party, McCain only tangentially addressed her own views on gay rights. She expressed her hope that all people could live “in full equality with each other.”

Later this week, the Log Cabin Republicans are hosting their national convention in Washington, DC, which will feature appearances by former New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, former congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Meghan McCain. In her Daily Beast column today, McCain reveals that RNC Chairman Michael Steele was invited to speak, but declined due to scheduling issues:

Former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, a well-respected Republican lawmaker who has made no bones about his desire to see the GOP move on from its obsession over social issues, is also speaking. I understand that Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was invited to speak, but was unable to schedule an appearance.

Steele’s absence will be conspicuous considering that the Log Cabin Republicans initially cheered his election to the chairmanship, but issued a stinging rebuke of his claim that it was “crazy” for the GOP to even “consider” civil unions for same-sex couples.

Yesterday on Twitter, Meghan McCain hit President Obama’s decision to go on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno:

hmmm, maybe the president shouldn’t go on leno and talk about basketball and instead explain to me how those morons at AIG got bonuses…

But as Huffington Post’s Sam Stein points out, “Perhaps Meghan shouldn’t have been so impatient with her critiques.” In fact, Obama referenced AIG at least seven times, and the New York Times wrote that “most of the discussion was devoted — perhaps for the first time in the show’s history — to in-depth discussions of tax policy, as well as macroeconomics and finance.” From his appearance last night:

I think that part of the calculation they were making was the way the contracts were written said, if you don’t pay us immediately, then we can claim three times as much as we were owed under the bonuses. … We’re going to do everything we can to see if we can get these bonuses back.

In an e-mail message today titled “useful idiot watch,” right-wing talker Laura Ingraham sends a “Memo to Meghan McCain,” claiming that her “plus-sized” attack was just “one satirical line” that the left is now using “to malign outspoken conservatives.” Ingraham claims that “indignation” over her “off-the-cuff remark” is “manufactured and totally phony“:

The left’s indignation in this instance is manufactured and totally phony. If any off-the-cuff remark about a woman’s size was condemnable, then where was the outrage when President Obama made a passing reference to Jessica Simpson’s “weight battle” during his Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer? And of course they look the other way when obvious personal attacks are levied against conservatives. Remember when Al Franken was the toast of all media for his book “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”? Last month The View’s Joy Behar called him a “fat guy”; and when I was a guest on The View a few years back she ridiculed Ann Coulter and me as “peroxide” blondes on Fox. I laughed it off. If you can’t stand the heat…get out of the punditry business.

In a nod to ThinkProgress, Ingraham closes her e-mail by encouraging her readers to “click here to listen to the entire segment from March 13th, instead of the version that was edited and sent around by left wing smearmongers.”