Well, surprise, surprise, surprise. A liberal president proposes to (gasp!) tax the evil rich and pass around the goodies to everybody else. How does the GOP fight a proposal than has things in the middle class would actually like?
Let’s just get one thing out of the way up front. This dog and pony show has zero to do with policy and everything to do with politics. Obama already knows that not one of these proposals will ever make it within smelling distance of the floor for a vote in either chamber. What’s being done here is essentially a hand-off of the baton to Hillary Clinton and all of the Democrat hopefuls with an eye toward the next election. This doesn’t make it a stupid idea for the President. He doesn’t need to jack up the tax rates to be successful. He just needs to make the Republicans refuse to jack up the tax rates.
This populist message is referred to as “populist” for a reason. People with less wealth are often hard pressed to resist feeling a bit of jealousy toward those who are more successful. Even if draining all the wealth from the wealthy won’t make any significant difference in their own lives, there is a nasty siren call associated with the idea of taking the fat cats down a peg or two.
I admit it is better to make the rest of us aspire to be among the rich rather than to envy and resent them. I dunno, though, I think it's a pretty hard sell. Even in good economic times, the politics of envy is attractive. Why work so hard for something when we can county on the politicla class to just take it away from somebody else and give it to us. And in tough economic times, with the middle class feeling ever more at risk, it's even more attractive. Somebody -- Ben Franklin, maybe -- said the republic will be over when people find they can vote themselves money. I fear we are at the point of no return on that deal.
