The persistence of high taxes as a top issue for Republican voters is interesting, especially since "wartime conservatives" often needle the GOP Establishment for constantly pushing tax cuts as their only coherent policy idea.
The rap against the GOP-E is that it compromises, caves, or remains utterly silent on countless other issues, but it keeps pushing for tax cuts. The Left eats its lunch on almost every other issue and pummels the GOP for constantly demanding "tax cuts for the rich."
Some of the Left's critique now resonates with the scrappy Trump wing of the GOP, which (understandably) suspects the GOP-E is more interested in doing favors for its big donors than serving its constituents. Tax cuts and deregulation for the big fish, nothing for the guppies.
And yet, much of the rank-and-file Republican electorate still thinks taxes are far too high, and not just their own. There is a healthy appetite for tax reforms that would stimulate business growth to the benefit of the middle class, even if middle class taxes don't change much.
Some of this could be due to Republican voters rebelling against the use of the tax code as an instrument of social engineering and control. They understand the absurdity of million-page tax codes with their endless politically-motivated penalties and exemptions.
Lower taxes don't *automatically* bring a simpler, flatter, fairer tax code, but higher taxes most assuredly bring a more complicated and unfair one. Taxes should be a fair method of funding a limited government, not an instrument of control and corruption.
The higher tax rates become, the more special exemptions are carved out for powerful interests and favored constituencies, the more the burden shifts to groups the Ruling Class despises, and the bigger government becomes while the economy is crushed beneath its bulk.
Also, decades of miserable experience have taught us that high taxes finance permanent expansions of government and retractions of liberty. The State is DANGEROUS when it's swimming in money. It uses the fund to entrench its power and seek out new missions for bloated agencies.
Lower taxes have a strong beneficial effect on society, as Trump's tax cuts were proving before the coronavirus struck. Democrats were losing their minds because lower taxes, rising wages, and higher employment were causing tectonic shifts in the political plates.
It takes a lot of work to create and maintain the inter-generational poverty and joblessness Democrats require for political success. Those blue cities didn't become hellholes by accident. Huge government programs, crushing regulations, and confiscatory taxation made it happen.
It's astounding how quickly a few years of lower taxes and higher economic growth - flowing organically, not artificially created with massive government spending - were undoing generations of left-wing social engineering. But for Covid, who knows where we'd be today?
But the wartime conservatives are right that tax cuts aren't enough. Maybe a lot of GOP voters see tax policy as a proxy for the rest of an expected conservative platform, and when it doesn't materialize, they quickly grow disillusioned.
Total focus on any single policy is insufficient and dangerous, because it's too easy for the other side to beat you down over your obsession. There must be a holistic vision tying issues and policies together, and you have to be sincerely interested in ALL of it.
Total focus on tax cuts was the focal point for the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" dodge that wrecked the GOP for decades and gave the Left a nearly unopposed romp through the social issues, rehabilitating socialism and creating a cultural appetite for Big Gov.
If you don't control spending as well as taxes, then lower taxes merely delay the explosive growth of the State for a little while, until rampant spending creates an irresistible demand for confiscatory taxation to "pay the bills." You're just shifting the burden by a generation.
It's also not helpful to the conservative cause if tax policy lowers the burden on Big Business without helping small business, entrepreneurs, and individuals. As we should all have learned by now, Big Business is NOT conservative by nature. Quite the contrary.
Years of redistributive tinkering with the tax code have virtually eliminated a huge number of Americans from the tax rolls. This limits the political appeal of tax cuts to people who (incorrectly) believe they're already paying zero and think the rich remain undertaxed.
Of course, a lot of those people are indirectly paying all sorts of taxes - and that's where green-eyeshade fiscal Republican politics fails, and wartime conservatism must step in. We have to show people the full burden of government and the true value of freedom.
Tax rates are certainly important, and we know how bad things get when they're cranked up to obscene levels. We also know the Left's appetite for money and power can never be satisfied by ANY level of taxation. That's why then can never articulate what a "fair" rate would be.
But healthy and growing conservatism, no longer willing to passively grant the Left a monopoly on populist appeal, has to grow far beyond lower taxes or economic growth with its message. Those topics must be part of a greater vision with appeal to everyone.
Democrats are waging all-out war against the middle class. That's the battlefield where conservatism must be ready to fight. Learn why they hate the middle class, learn it's not just defined by its tax rates and spending habits, and you'll understand why we must protect it. /end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
