McCain Pushes Tax Cut Magic
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Economy, McCain, Taxes
As the final week of the campaign begins, John McCain appears prepared to ride his economic message through until the end. And that message is simple: lower taxes and less spending, with some banking regulations thrown in for good measure.
McCain is careful to point out that his economic policies will differ greatly from those of George W. Bush. I assume he’s directly referencing Bush’s out-of-control spending, an issue McCain – with real fiscal conservative credentials – should have been hitting on since last summer. But when McCain promises that his tax cuts will create millions of jobs and revive Wall Street, I get an awfully big whiff of Bush’s almost religious devotion to lower taxes.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely on the conservative side of things when it comes to taxation. But I don’t believe low taxes are an elixir for all our economic ills. The system is more complicated than that and, if McCain actually wants to sound different than Bush, he’d do well to advance a more comprehensive philosophy. After all, McCain has never been one to believe in the all-encompassing magic of tax cuts, as witnessed by his animus relationship with tax-cutting evangelist Grover Norquist – a relationship only recently patched up.
If the McCain campaign had anticipated rather than ignored the economic turmoil, McCain could have pushed his fiscally responsible credentials throughout the Fall. But instead of convincing the electorate that he has the good sense to manage our government resources and spending well (while Barack Obama will be just another spendthrift like Bush), McCain is left scrambling for a narrative and is having to lean on Republican tropes rather than advancing the kind of sophisticated policies we need.
I wish this weren’t the case. McCain could have done so much better on this issue.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Economy, McCain, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I would say that McCain was the furthest from anticipating it, so that’s definitely a pipe dream. :P
October 28th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Alan, I’m surprised you actually aren’t surprised of McCain’s actions. This is a man who wants to be the President so bad that he will do anything to do so. Not only has he written about that fact, but it becomes obvious when you evaluate the many different messages his campaign has been about. Obama has had one fairly consistent message: I am change and we need change. McCain, even at his best, does not really represent change. Sure, the McCain I would have voted for (circa 2000) is not the McCain of today, but I don’t even think the McCain of 2000 really represents the drastic change we need now. We can’t keep the wealth of this country in such few hands and the Republican philosophy inherently protects that- Republican tax cuts inherently benefit the wealthiest so that they can be freer to start companies, make jobs, and pass the wealth downward. Unfortunately we’ve seen that this political philosophy does not take into account human greed- not saying the Dem’s philosophy does, but theirs is less likely to hoard the wealth in the hands of a few, but rather in the hands of the government. I’d rather have the government because we can at least throw them out, you can’t throw out rich people.