Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:15:00 AM
On April 17th, I posted
an essay about the tactics a smart Democrat would adopt. Central to that was the idea that a Democrat could appear centrist by proposing across the board tax cuts. The reason now is especially propitious for Democrats to do so is that the AMT would make such tax cuts largely ineffective. So a Democrat could cut taxes yet suffer only minimal drops in income. In fact, if they inflated enough, they could raise wages enough to make all tax payers fall under the AMT, as it has no cost of living increases.
What makes this interesting is that, very shortly after I posted it, both Democrats came out for cutting taxes on the bulk of Americans. Now, they did shy away from across the board tax cuts, which is foolish, as those in the top brackets will certainly be hit by the AMT, so cutting taxes for them is painless, but still, it is strange to see Democrats posing as tax cutters.
Obviously, most likely I and my little essay had nothing to do with this new position, but, because of the incredibly remote possibility they did steal the idea, I am going to add this:
A smart Democrat would also come out in support of limited government, a strong national defense, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
(We will see if that works.)
POSTSCRIPT
I know Obama's "blueprint" had called for tax cuts on "working families" already, I wrote
a review of that document, but he had shied away from details about what constituted a "working family" until very recently, so I consider the definition of who would get tax cuts a new policy. All Democrats promise tax cuts to some nebulously defined group of "deserving" people. It is unusual for them to actually define the group whose taxes they will cut.