The non-stop Joe the Plumber hoo ha has gone viral, with people at McCain and Palin rallies holding up signs identifying themselves as Rose the Teacher, Hal the Cop, Ed the Dairyman, etc. American Princess puts forth a possible theory about it:

“On the other hand, for something to go so viral that people market it on their own is like the Holy Grail of social media based marketing theory. Has the GOP unintentionally hit Dark Knight status?”

She admits that it probably has not, but the omnipresence of the Joe the Plumber and the rise of Sarah Palin may inspire a grassroots movement driven by social media, particularly in the (likely) wilderness period for the future of the Republican Party and conservative movement over the next four years. The Dark Knight analogy holds some clout, basically. In the short term, we’re looking at the “I’m Joe the Plumber” contest (Kleinheider has a Nashvillian entry), which, okay, the contest is sort of bush league, but the following exchange via National Review is not:

“Are you going to check my license, too?” he asked me. “Are you going to check my immigration status? I’m ready, I have everything here. Whatever you want, I have it. I have my green card, I have my passport — “

I was a little surprised. Did Munoz really bring his papers with him to a McCain rally? I asked.

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather
Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”

A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

This turn on the MSM, especially with the Palin stabs, will aid the building of new media institutions to combat mainstream coverage, in the same way Huffington Post and DailyKos rose out of the ashes of 2000 and 2004. The anger and identification could also be symptomatic of larger moves towards grassroots organization around the issues of energy, Card Check, and wealth redistribution involving large swaths of the population during an Obama presidency. If Palin’s operating on her own behalf already, the reform movement may have a considerable following; don’t forget, as Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti sums up:

1. Palin’s speech at the Republican convention was the highest rated convention speech in history.
2. Palin’s debate with Joe Biden was the most-watched of this year’s presidential debates, the highest-rated veep debate in history, and drew more viewers than the 1992 three-way presidential debate between Bush 41, Clinton, and Perot.
3. Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend gave the show its highest ratings in 14 years.

Palin and the Sam’s Club Republicans have a huge opportunity to mobilize successfully over the next few years.

Katherine Miller is a junior at Vanderbilt University. She blogs daily at Right-Wing Vitriol.