{"id":4313,"date":"2011-10-25T11:21:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T17:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/tax-the-poor-is-a-lousy-political-slogan\/"},"modified":"2011-10-25T11:21:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T17:21:28","slug":"tax-the-poor-is-a-lousy-political-slogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/tax-the-poor-is-a-lousy-political-slogan\/","title":{"rendered":"“‘Tax the poor’ is a lousy political slogan.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The GOP\u2019s latest tax gimmickry: Soak the poor – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: October 24 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the strangest things in our politics: The only \u201cbig\u201d ideas Republicans and conservatives seem to offer these days revolve around novel and sometimes bizarre ways of cutting taxes on rich people. \u2026<\/p>\n

Republicans have boxed themselves into a rejection of both their own traditions and the idea that government can do any good. Thus they have confined themselves to endless fiddling with the tax code. Almost everything conservatives suggest these days is built around the single idea that if only government took less money away from the wealthy, all our problems would magically disappear. \u2026<\/p>\n

Reagan\u2019s optimism has thus been replaced by crabby put-downs of the less affluent. Perry said it directly in his announcement speech<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don\u2019t even pay any income tax.\u201d Considering the other injustices in our society, this seems an odd and mean-spirited obsession.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cTax the poor\u201d is a lousy political slogan. That\u2019s why Cain\u2019s 9-9-9 plan and Perry\u2019s flat tax are doomed to fail. Among conservatives, Santa Claus has given way to Scrooge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The GOP\u2019s latest tax gimmickry: Soak the poor – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

But consistent with the long term \u201cStarve the Beast\u201d philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GOP\u2019s latest tax gimmickry: Soak the poor – The Washington Post By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: October 24 It\u2019s one of the strangest things in our politics: The only \u201cbig\u201d ideas Republicans and conservatives seem to offer these days revolve around novel and sometimes bizarre ways of cutting taxes on rich people. \u2026 Republicans … Continue reading “‘Tax the poor’ is a lousy political slogan.”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}