The choice
by David Atkins
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve probably seen this:
Barack Obama isn’t the most progressive President the nation has had. There is still significant danger of some sort of Grand Compromise malarky in the lame duck session, and Clintonian concessions if the GOP takes the Senate and holds the House.
But the contrast with Romney and the Republicans is still enormous. If the Republican Party were sane, it could run a middle-of-the-road Eisenhower/Ford style candidate, focus on the bad economy, and probably slide into victory. But that’s not who the Republicans are. They’re wholly dominated by Objectivists and Dominionists. So instead, even as the Obama team runs devastating ads in primetime, they have to deal with stories like this:
A tax system overhaul along the lines that Mitt Romney has proposed would give big tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burden on middle- and lower-income households, according to an analysis from economists at the Tax Policy Center.
The researchers did not analyze the exact Romney plan, since it is incomplete and the researchers were reluctant to make assumptions until the campaign released more details.
Instead they created a model for a revenue-neutral income tax change that incorporates some of Mr. Romney’s proposals, which include lowering marginal tax rates, eliminating both the alternative minimum tax and taxation of investment income of most taxpayers, doing away with the estate tax and repealing the additional high-income taxes passed with the Affordable Care Act.
In a sane world this election wouldn’t even be a contest. But in the real world, race resentment, sexism and bald-faced economic lies are making it a nailbiter.
It would be nice if all the Ayn Rand and Tim LaHaye worshippers would go found their own country and destroy it apart from the rest of us. Sadly, they’re intent on dragging this country and the world down with them.
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