It has been a couple of days since Obama signaled his concession to the Republican agenda by agreeing to extend tax cuts to all Americans for the next two years. While its always been alleged by Conservatives that Democrats were the party of tax and spend, I don't recall during my life-time, such a denouement of the Left's true agenda--confiscation of private wealth through class warfare. The seething anger towards Obama and the enemy--any one who is not a Democrat, has broken their rhetorical composure and released the truth from their own lips.
They hate us, they want our money.
I heard the other day that 80% of Obama's donors are very upset, which if true, bodes ill for his reelection. Never mentioned, but always at the front of my mind is a simple fact--rich Democrats can still contribute to the federal treasury in excess of the established tax rates, but don't hold your breath. Several creditable surveys suggests that most Democrats follow the Joe Biden model of charitable giving--they don't.
Still, in all this unintentional honesty by the Left, there is still no explanation as to why the Democrats, who controlled the entire Federal government, did not dispose of the Bush tax cuts at any time in the past two years. Obviously there is some political benefit to simply letting them expire, but the risk that they would be in exactly the situation they find themselves in has been increasingly obvious over the past year. Could it be that Democrats actually understand the economic benefits of lower taxes? It sure looks that way since the middle class tax cut represents a far greater loss of revenue than what we find in the top tier and a 1/3 cut (albeit temporary) of the social security tax can only be construed as Republican-style stimulus.
What is really perplexing is Obama's political tactics. His speech was, well weird and almost certainly counter-productive. He pointed out that he had run on raising taxes on the rich, which only served to highlight his political weakness. Oddly enough, his anger at Republicans, the Professional left and Congressional Democrats seemed genuine, but guaranteed to isolate his administration even further. More to the point, he lost a perfect opportunity to pivot and turn an inevitable concession into an expression of Presidential courage. In something less than two years from now, should a stable tax policy start creating jobs and improving the economy, Obama will be hard-pressed to take credit for it and should he try, YouTube videos of his remarks will be placed into heavy rotation to remind the American public how he had to be dragged by his heals to get him to do it.
Its a little early to tell, but as I stated in an earlier post (well before the mainstream media noticed it--do they read Anatreptic?), Obama may well have a 'read my lips' problem on his hands. Obama's polls over the past year have made it clear how thorough he has alienated everyone to the left of Che Guevara and now apparently, with this concession, he has lost the enthusiastic support of his base.
The Republican primary just got a lot more interesting.
