Bill Kristol: You Know, Maybe GOP Should Consider Raising Taxes

And the rush to adopt the Democratic agenda by "conservatives" continues apace.

"The leadership of the Republican Party and the leadership of the conservative movement has to pull back, let people float new ideas. Let's have a serious debate," Kristol said on "Fox News Sunday." "Don't scream and yell if one person says 'You know what? It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.' It really won't, I don't think."

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"I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000, make it $500,000, make it $1 million," Kristol said. "Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood?"

Hey, I have an idea, why don't we throw card check in to sweeten the pot?

A few problems with this:

1- It's idiotic.

2- It's moronic.

3- It's atrocious economics. We wouldn't be conceding simply a political point but a major economic one....increasing taxes hurts the economy. Why in the world would sign on to that? What votes are we suddenly getting?

4- The federal government has more than enough revenue (assuming tax hikes raise revenue for the purpose of this discussion). What it has is a spending problem. If you think you can trade tax hikes for spending cuts with Democrats, you probably think you can trade amnesty for Hispanic votes or that Pennsylvania is in play for the GOP. History shows...otherwise.

5- It's a moronic idea.

Can we wait just a little longer before we decide to throw every conservative principle overboard?

Here's my suggestion as to what we should do...talk to average people. We spent a lot of time talking to and about "job creators". Well, not everyone is going to start their own business or even wants to. We need to speak directly to the Dirty Jobs people and not just the people who own businesses that do dirty jobs.

Yes, the people who do those jobs benefit from the impact of job creation friendly policy for "job creators" but it's a secondary effect. We should be the party that not only stands for the Joe the Plumbers of the world but also the guys he hires. Talk directly to them about what conservatism means for them. Right now we're reaching them indirectly, through a double bank-shot approach We should talk about how energy from the ground is the manufacturing of the 21st century. Not everyone wants a high tech job and people don't want to hear about how helping their boss will someday help them, talk directly to these people. Hell, we might even manage to connect with some Hispanic and even black voters in the process without sell our souls in the process.

I hate appeal to Reagan "arguments" but that's how he won the "Reagan Democrats" over.

It's important that we focus on the disaster that the Romney campaign was in every way but this election shouldn't have come down to Orca working or not on election day. People should have been camping out to vote against Obama. Clearly they weren't.

We have a lot of problems selling conservatism (policy, technical proficiency and message emphasis) but being more like the Democrats isn't one of them.

In the meantime, I remain "For Sequestration". The people voted for irresponsibility last week, let them have it.

posted by DrewM. at 11:48 AM

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