Bill Kristol has a point: Given that the wealthiest counties in the U.S. are mostly blue-voting elites who caricature Republicans for not voting for higher taxes, maybe Republicans should focus on ensuring no new taxes on the $80,000 to $250,000 upper-middle-class households and let the tax chips fall where they may on the mostly Obama households above that. But only if Republicans demand in return for granting Obama’s “pay your fair share”/”you didn’t build that”/”fat cat” demands — which will only bring in revenues to account for about 8 percent of the annual deficit (this isn’t 1995, and something like the grand Gingrich/Clinton bargain won’t do much to today’s deficits) — that Obama comes up with the other 92 percent in cuts. As it is now, we are still subject to the election-winning demagoguery that not upping the tax rate by 3 or 4 percentage points on the $250,000-and-above brackets caused the gargantuan debt. What would Obama do after he got his populist rhetoric fulfilled and still faced a $900 billion annual deficit? Ask for ever more taxes?
By the same token, Obama demagogued the Republicans on the Latino vote, as if Latinos just wanted a fair and compassionate DREAM Act for the 1 to 2 million or so children of illegal aliens, who came as infants and are now in school or in the military, and would be deprived of becoming brain surgeons and corporate lawyers because of nativist Republicans who wished “to deport ’em all.” But for every explicit DREAM Act by definition there must be an implicit Un-DREAM Act: Once you claim to have the power to distinguish who qualifies for amnesty, you de facto also have the power to ascertain who doesn’t. Would Democrats and the Latino leadership, then, be willing to deport the remaining Un-DREAM illegal aliens who either are on public assistance and not in school or in the military, or have a criminal record? Or, is the DREAM Act simply a smoke-screen for round one of planned serial amnesties and perennially open borders to alter the demography of the American Southwest?
Can’t a Republican publicly say, “We support Barack Obama’s efforts to cut $900 billion plus out of the annual deficit, which with his plan of raising $80 billion plus from those who make over $250,000, is a path to a balanced budget. And we support his plan to deport millions who broke the law in crossing our borders, after he has granted 1 or 2 million amnesty for staying off public assistance and staying in school”?
P.S. Some have written to ask whether the “Narrative” post was tongue-in-cheek. But of course — yet still similar to what we will be hearing this coming week.