TPM Reader RW thinks there’s more afoot in the President’s new tax cut push than just the taxes — similar to a point our Brian Beutler made today about how it puts Romney in a very dicey position.
One point which seems to largely have been missed in Obama’s tax offensive is that it completely revives the discussion on the GOP’s obstruction. Here is an area where the parties agree–98% of Americans should not have their taxes raised. Yet the GOP, purely for political advantage, refuses to compromise on the issue in order to preserve the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. They are putting politics in front of tax relief for the vast majority of people. Americans will not tolerate that.
It will also resonate across the Congressional races. GOP candidates will have to explain exactly why they can’t make this change right now. There is simply no other reason other than political advantage.
Most importantly, Romney is his party’s worst possible messenger on this. With millions stashed in overseas accounts to avoid taxation he’s living proof of why the taxes on the top 2% of Americans have to be raised. More importantly he shares the blindness to the optics of this issue that many of the cartoon character rich that attended his Hamptons soiree.
I was struck by a remark I saw on the internet over the weekend. Billionaire pundit Mort Zuckerman, who is somewhere around America’s 150th richest person, told ABC News that Obama was “invoking a class warfare that threatens us all,” as if somehow it was equally threatening to a man with $2 billion in holdings and an unemployed person. Avoiding this type of blindness is exactly what Romney has not been able to do. Its as if the GOP’s entire cadre of political advisors couldn’t see this coming.
