Posted by
john on Friday, February 27, 2009 12:59:51 AM
This morning Rush read the last paragraph of Daniel Henninger's WSJ column, entitled "The Radical Presidency". Herewith that paragraph:
Gov. Bobby Jindal's post-speech reply did not come close to recognizing the gauntlet Mr. Obama has thrown down to the opposition. Unless the GOP can discover a radical message of its own to distinguish it from the president's, it should prepare to live under Mr. Obama's radicalism for at least a generation.
Mr. Henninger is exactly right. He is also right that this is a "radical presidency", and a radical president. As I've said, Barack Mugabe intends to take down the country by inducing a depression, so that he can remake it in his image. Republicans have to start explaining this now - and offer bold alternatives - in order to realize the big gains in 2010 that are both (a) achievable; and (b) necessary to derail the stealth coup d'etatthat the President is attempting.
What form do I think "Republican Radicalism" should take? I don't have enough time or space, so I'll distill the matter to two simple elements. First, explain how Mugabe is doing everything wrong, assuming he wants to bring about recovery. Raising tax rates in a recession is exactly the wrong thing to do - it is exactly what Hoover tried; moreover, it will not raise revenues as expected. Lowering the mortgage interest deduction is exactly the wrong thing to do, if you want to shore up asset values. Raising taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains is exactly the wrong thing to do, if you want to support asset values and facilitate lending. This is how we begin to pin the depression on Mugabe. Another job will be to talk, talk, talk about how affirmative action lending got us to this place; blame it on Mugabe (through his association with ACORN); and point out that all of this spending is going to make things worse, not stimulate.
Element #2 of Republican Radicalism is its affirmative side. It can be summed up in two words: flat tax. Now is the time. Stop playing games with the tax code every time an election shifts the balance of power; stop "spreading the wealth" to accountants and tax and estate lawyers; and do institute a simple, understandable system under which higher income taxpayers will pay much more than lower earners, but not face 50%-plus taxes on each additional dollar earned. The efficiencies and incentive benefits would be so stupendously great that we just might be able to cut the deficit in half in four years.
Per Mr. Henninger, Republicans need to go radical. I say this means go libertarian. Put this simple choice to the voters: do we want to sustain our heritage of limited government - the ethos that made this country more than any other; or do we want to be a nation of unlimited and unrestrained government? Pushing the flat tax would throw down a gauntlet of our own, and go a long way toward exposing which is the party that can't live without getting all in your business.