This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: taxes
“Trying to have it both ways, while running up massive debt” may not be the successful slogan for the Republican Party, but it would be accurate. The Republican refusal to see the obvious contradiction between preaching the need to balance the budget while advocating for policies that would increase the debt is neatly captured in Mitt Romney’s recent foreign policy speech.
For more than a generation, Republican candidates for almost every office have campaigned on the need to cut taxes and have successfully intimidated the Democratic Party into keeping silent regarding the need for taxes in a modern state. This anti-tax rhetoric has contributed to the current debt problems facing the U.S. as decades of increased spending while reducing taxes, including during periods when the borrow-and-spend Republicans were in power, have put the U.S. deep in the red. That the result of cutting taxes and increasing spending is increased deficits should come as a surprise to nobody, but nonetheless demonstrates the danger of the extreme anti-tax position of the Republican Party.
It is unlikely that 2011 will be less frustrating than 2010 for progressives or that Obama will begin to be more responsive to progressive voters who played such an important role in his 2008 victory. This is partially due to the president's understanding of reality in Washington, including his party's defeat in November of this year, but is also influenced by the evolving national political environment. While there has been some talk of a challenge from the left in the Democratic Primary in 2012, Obama's political team seems to understand that this is very unlikely to occur and even more unlikely to be a significant challenge if it were to occur. Regardless of whether or not Obama, in some abstract sense, deserves this challenge, it is hard to imagine a situation where a progressive candidate mounts a serious challenge to the Democratic Party's first African American president. Obama still has strong support among African American voters who would almost certainly rally around the president in the face of this type of challenge. With little support from African American voters, any challenger would have a very difficult time running a serious campaign, especially as most of the party's leadership, regardless of ethnicity, would probably continue to support the president.
Obama turned to Clinton to help sell his compromise on the Bush tax cuts, which is extremely unpopular among much of Obama's progressive base. While Clinton still has formidable political skills, he is not the president. This was not at all obvious last week at the White House as Obama left Clinton alone to finish the joint press briefing. Obama did not seem to understand that voters wanted to hear the current president explain his thinking, not to be spun by a former president.
For Obama, however, compromise seems to have taken on a bigger meaning. Rather than view compromising as an important tool, but only one of many that is at his disposal, Obama has treated it as an ends, and goal, in itself. Compromise, however, is only a valuable tool if it is one of several, such as strong-arming recalcitrant legislators or building popular support for a position and is backed up by a credible threat to end negotiations, attack the other party or something else. Since taking office, Obama has seemed reluctant to view compromise this way.