Posted on 01/08/2003 3:00:02 PM PST by Wright is right!
(The following is an exchange that occured between Aaron "Errin'" Brown and Jeff Greenfield last night after a report from Dana Bash, their appropriately-named White House correspondent on Bush's tax proposals and the Dem's criticism with the usual "tax-cuts-for-the-rich" mantra --- BASH in this transcript is her last paragraph before the studio segment.)
BASH: And Aaron, now comes the hard part, which, of course, is going to be selling the plan. Administration officials will fan out across the country to do that this week. But the toughest sales job will be in Congress. And, yes, the president has a Republican- controlled Congress now, but particularly in the Senate, you always need 60 votes to pass anything. And listening to the criticism from Democrats today on the plan, they need about nine to pass it, and it is not going to be easy to get that, Aaron.
(Note that no one challenged Bash's half-truth about passing bills in the Senate...)
BROWN: Dana, thank you. Dana Bash at the White House tonight.
Jeff Greenfield, our senior political analyst is with us. Remember when Republicans were obsessed with the deficit?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. This is not...
BROWN: Whatever happened to that?
GREENFIELD: This is not your father's Republican Party. About 1980, when Ronald Reagan converted the Republicans to a supply side tax cuts are the essence issue, the Republican Party basically has, by and large, with some exceptions like Chuck Grassley, John McCain, have abandoned this idea. And their idea, basically...
BROWN: Abandoned the idea that deficits matter.
GREENFIELD: That deficits are bad, right. And that tax cuts are now the central driving idea, I think it is fair to say of the Republican Party. And it's an all-purpose policy. George Bush advocated them in 2000, when we had triple digit surpluses. And the argument was we could afford it.
Now we have triple digit deficits. And tax cuts are good in times of peace and war, inflation and no inflation. That is their fixed idea. And I think there are two keys to why it comes out today. And they both are linked to George Bush's -- the father's problems.
One is, don't alienate your base. And the base of the Republican Party more than anything else wants tax cuts. Second, be proactive, to use that wretched word on the economy. Don't be passive. And this speech, a lot of the language in the speech almost sounded like a Democrat. You know, concern for the unemployed, let's get people back to work, let's give people a chance at jobs. And the other reason Republicans love tax cuts is it starves the government. Republicans as a party basically believe government is not a good idea, big government. And the more you cut taxes, the less money you leave in the hands of government people to create new programs.
So in that sense, it's a coherent program. Whether it is economically sensible or not is another question.
BROWN: Well, I'm going to take us off on a tangent. I'm probably going to regret it later. But so far we haven't seen much willingness from the president to cut programs as such. Just run up the deficit.
GREENFIELD: Because this country is ideologically conservative and institutionally liberal. The American people -- again, a phrase I abhor -- always say let's cut government waste, but let's spend more on things like Social Security, Medicare and the like. If I may, the Democratic problem is very quickly two-fold.
(Watch this very carefully, Ms. Pelosi...)
One, they seem to think that the rich are the same kind of rich that they were in 1948 in terms of an income level. Right? A $100,000 a year family, they're comfortable, but that's a middle management person and an assistant principal. That's not plutocrats.
The second thing is that -- this goes back to George McGovern's confiscatory (ph) inheritance tax plan in...
BROWN: Boy, you're throwing around lots of words tonight.
GREENFIELD: Well that's what it was. It was a 90 percent inheritance tax. And the shoe workers in New Hampshire were furious at McGovern. And the McGovern campaign couldn't understand why until they realized the shoe workers believed their KIDS would be rich.
BROWN: All right. We have an interesting -- as a country -- or it's evolved as an interesting attitude about the wealthy. It does not as a political strategy seem to work very well.
(Boy, can it be that Aaron Brown is CATCHING ON??)
GREENFIELD: Resentment -- the last CNN poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that Bush's economic program favored the wealthy, but they didn't care. Because there is -- this country's never been a place, except during the depression and the 10 years thereafter, where you could run by on resentment. Because, as I said about those shoe workers in New Hampshire, this country believes -- and there's a lot of evidence to it -- in mobility.
(What he means is economic upward mobility. The Dems act as thought the same people who are poor now will always be poor in the future, when in fact, we may have a static PERCENTAGE of poor, but there's a constant churn, people moving up, new workers entering the workforce for the first time.)
Maybe you're not going to be wealthy, but maybe your grandchildren will be. And they don't want your grandchildren taxed that heavily. So it's a real problem for the Democrats to make this argument.
I think they can do it by saying let's cut taxes for middle income and wealthy people. But they can't just do it by saying the rich, the rich, the rich. It's a buzzword that hasn't played in a very long time.
BROWN: Thank you. And you used proactive, and you made the quote sign, too, in the same three and a half minutes.
GREENFIELD: You know, next week I'll come back and do charades. Obscene charades.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Of course, I doubt it'll have much impact. The Dems have so much invested in this that they're just cannot bring themselves to abandon their shrill knee-jerk poverty-pimping.
Michael
But I think it's significant that even the long-time lapdogs of the Democrat Party and the leftist agenda in the media start abandoning the tired old rhetoric of the left. The Democrats must be beside themselves. They haven't had a new idea, an new thought, or a new strategy in years. Their lies are wearing thin.
hUH? Phil Donahue and Al Frakenstein said there are no liberals in the media
Like I said, notice how no one challenged her on that grade-school-level half truth. In practical terms, it DOES SOMETIMES take 60 to get the odd bill thru without threat of a filly-buster, but not nearly the way she said it. Of course, being an empty-headed lib, she's doubtless just parroting something some other lib newsguy told her.
Michael
The dog has stopped hunting, for the time being.
Corzine said that the tax break for dividends should be given to the corporation rather than the investor. He sounds more like a supply sider than the president.
-PJ
Don't worry, the Dims are too stupid to listen to Jeff. Just like the slime worm in Tremors, they're still gonna run right off that cliff.
I heard part of Neil's interview with Geraldine Ferraro yesterday on Rush. He really sliced and diced her, but it really wasn't a fair fight. She's a complete moron...how that bimbo ever got elected is beyond me, she couldn't get on the Virginia Beach school board, our standards are simply too high.
These are the Democrat senators up for reelection in 2004 that can be beaten!!
1. Murray......WA
2. Reid......NV
3. Miller....GA (retiring) easy pick up for Bob Barr.
4. Dorgan.....ND
5. Edwards.......NC
6. Lincoln....AR
7. Schumer......NY (Rudi?)
8. Mikulski.....MD
9. Dodd.....CT
10. Daschle.......SD
11. Leahy.....VT
12. Boxer.....CA
The Bush senior debate with sassy smoker Ferraro was the funniest most mismatched IQ contest I've ever seen to this day. Yet the arrogant stupid Dems still wheel her out in complete denial.
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