[Illustration Conservative Blame-Game by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times]
GOP should fear voters, not the ‘fiscal cliff’
Keep fingerprints off Obama’s tax hikes
Like usual, I agree with Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit that the GOP should force Obama's hand by (1) passing Simpson-Bowles, closing the Washington revolving door and (3) making Hollywood fat cats pay their fair share.
Force the Democrats to kill those measures (and they will). Then walk away from the fiscal cliff debate altogether. It's far better to raise everyone's taxes than to pretend we can close the deficit gap simply by taxing "the rich" in a manner that grows the welfare state.
The Democrats’ long game is to push an ever-increasing tax burden onto fewer and fewer taxpayers. This grows a class of Americans who may or may not earn paychecks but certainly become beneficiaries of government largesse while remaining blissfully detached from its enormous cost. (What’s their fair share?) Economists would call this a recipe for disaster. Democrats would call it a voting base. Weak-kneed Republicans are poised to help them build it.I know our frightful batch of Republicans are scared to actually debate the Democrats but they better grow a spine soon or they'll be sent packing.
The left has railed against the “Bush tax cuts for the rich” for a decade. (Start preparing those YouTube video montages now.) Democrats’ dishonesty will be fully exposed, as the typical middle-class family of four who once bought into the anti-Bush mythology sees their taxes go up by $2,200. If the Bush tax cuts were only for the rich, the difference must be what we’ll call the Obama tax hikes.Swing by The Washington Times and let me know what you think. And, as always, thanks for sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else the cool kids hang out.
Democrats hate the Bush tax cuts on a visceral level. In their minds, those cuts caused the recession, exploded the debt and are the root of all evil. If undoing them makes things worse — and it will — Democrats have some serious explaining to do. If Republicans aren’t up to winning that debate, it’s time to replace them.
It would be far better to let the Democrats own this disaster than to put a GOP stamp of approval on it. Republicans would be foolish — as Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist puts it — to “have their fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
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