I can’t believe conservatives are embracing this guy as a hero.

You know, on one level, the public (and media) fascination with Joe the Plumber made sense.  Plumbers — not Joe himself, mind you, but the vast majority of them — are hardworking men and women trying to make a living.  They’re both blue collar workers and small business owners. They’re a walking distillation of the American dream:  work hard, do right, and you’ll make it.

But now, if we are to believe K-Lo, the new conservative hero is Rick the Floor Trader.  Really?  A floor trader?  A floor trader.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Oh man, this is too good to be true.

Last I checked “floor trader” is synonymous in the public mind with “stockbroker.”  And given the implosion of Wall Street — and the impact of its collapse on Main Street, you would think that Republicans would understand that they’d be better off with, I don’t know, Mark the Car Thief as their hero.

That said, there is a kernel of truth in Santelli’s rant, and the Obama mortgage plan represents the first genuine opening for Republicans since the Administration took office.  Santelli captures an important and very American sentiment:  people want to believe that moral hazard still means something.

Nothing gets people more angry than the idea of something for nothing.  They need to believe that they won’t get stuck bailing out a neighbor who took out a home equity loan to buy a Hummer and go to Tahiti while they stayed at home, drove their used car, and paid their mortgage. As Kevin Drum put it earlier today,

[T]here’s definitely a different sense to this: it’s closer, more personal.  Wall Street being bailed out is one thing: it’s infuriating, but in the end you just shrug your shoulders and figure this is the way the world works.  But homeowners?  Your neighbors?  The guy who installed fancy granite countertops and a new wet bar and then mocked you for carefully husbanding your money instead of living the good life?  He’s going to get bailed out?  WTF?

As I read it, the Obama plan does little to address this problem.  Frankly, I’m not sure yet how it could.  But unless we find a way to divide the real victims from the merely stupid, the Republicans very well could have an issue that resonates.

Unless, of course, they make Santelli their spokesman.  Because the moment Americans find out that he drives a Porsche or wears bespoke suits or lives in a McMansion, he no longer can pretend to be a populist hero.

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