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Thursday, September 13, 2007
GOP Rethinking Tax Cuts As Solution To Everything Imaginable
At Womenstake, Christina Martin-Firvada reports on how the GOP is finding that tax cuts are going out of style.
In case you do not follow this sort of thing, it's Fashion Week in New York,that magical time twice yearly when vanity wrestles good sense to the ground and hogties it to the latest impossible trend. (How do you feel about shoes designed to look too small?).
Here in Washington, spring 2008 previews are also going on, just without the skinny models and all-night parties. Two D.C. papers, Roll Call (subscription needed) and Congressional Quarterly, reported yesterday that GOP senators were advised by their pollsters to "cut the 'happy talk' about past tax cuts and economic growth," because voters are not interested in tax cuts and tax-cut messaging is unlikely to assist the GOP. The news is apparently leading to an enormous shift in thinking among GOP senators. As one report stated, "Senators said they realize they cannot use the tax cuts as simply a Band-Aid for every problem, and if they propose them, they must do a better job explaining why they are the right answer."
...More important yet will be whether members not only change their messaging, but their votes as well. Maybe voters are not interested in tax cuts because the tax cuts of the last several years didn't do much for most voters. More than a few Americans would be better off if recreational tax cutting disappeared once and for all, along with this season's unforgiving stovepipe jeans. So here is hoping spring 2008 heralds a season of good taste and even better policy sense.
The diminishing appeal of tax cuts may also be a kind of brand crisis, as the GOP and everything associated with it loses public favor. After all, public reasoning on the murky subject of taxation does not have a good track record.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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