Making Excuses for the Republican Leadership
Recently
by Patrick J. Buchanan: The
Depardieu Revolution
At the Potsdam
conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill
learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years
through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office.
“It may well
be a blessing in disguise,” said his wife Clementine.
“At the moment,
it seems quite effectively disguised,” replied Churchill.
Republicans
must feel that way today. For they have survived their own Dunkirk.
They may have left their helmets, canteens and rifles behind, but
they did finally get off the beach.
That Republicans
suffered a rout, as the British did with the fall of France and
evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, is undeniable.
The party that
blocked tax increases since George H.W. Bush agreed to raise Ronald
Reagan’s top rate of 28 percent to 35 percent, thus repudiating
his “no-new-taxes” pledge, just signed on to one of the largest
tax increases in history.
Payroll taxes
on working Americans will rise by a third, from 4.2 percent of wages
and salaries to 6.2 percent. For couples earning $450,000, the tax
rate rises from 15 to 20 percent on dividends and capital gains,
and from 35 to 39.6 percent on ordinary income. The death tax will
rise from 35 to 40 percent on estates over $5 million.
Obamacare will
push those rates up further. And now we learn the bill was stuffed
with tax breaks for windmills, NASCAR owners and Hollywood.
Why did Republicans
go along?
Had they not,
taxes would have risen for everyone. And Obama would have postured
as the tax-cutting savior of the middle class by proposing to restore
the Bush tax cuts for every couple earning less than $250,000.
What does this
bill do to spur growth and create jobs? Nothing.
Even Lord Keynes
would have wondered what these Americans were doing raising taxes
on a recovering economy.
The GOP defense:
We took this rotten deal to prevent a worse one.
And what, if
any, is the “blessing in disguise”?
Obama has no
more leverage. The Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent are now permanent.
To block further tax hikes, all the House need do, from now to 2017,
is stand united and just say no.
Obama is thus
almost certainly staring at four more trillion-dollar deficits to
match the last four, and he has no leverage to force Republicans
to provide him with new revenue.
The president
threatens that before he signs on to new spending cuts, Republicans
will have to “make the rich pay their fair share.”
The GOP response
should be: We will work with you on spending cuts, but there will
be no more tax increases. If higher taxes are a condition you impose
for spending cuts, there will be no spending cuts.
But, Mr. President,
you will be in the driver’s seat when we go over the cliff into
bankruptcy. You will be your party’s Herbert Hoover.
John Boehner
and the Republicans got their clocks cleaned in these negotiations
because they believed the president was dealing in good faith.
But the ideology
and the interests of the Democratic Party dictate not only preserving
federal programs, but expanding the numbers of beneficiaries, already
near 100 million.
For the larger
the number of beneficiaries, the larger the bloc of voters for the
party of government and the greater the opposition to any who would
dare to cut government.
The question
for Republicans is what they do now, besides say no to new taxes.
Most Democrats
are not going to agree to freeze or cut Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid, Obamacare, food stamps, federal aid to education, Head
Start, Pell Grants, housing subsidies, welfare, earned income tax
credits or unemployment checks. These are the party’s pride and
joy, the reason the Democratic Party exists.
As we have
seen since 2009, Democrats will readily accept trillion-dollar deficits
rather than do even minor surgery on their cherished programs.
As for the
Republicans, is it wise to propose cuts in Social Security and Medicare,
upon which Republican seniors depend, when they know for certain
Democrats will reject those cuts and take credit for doing so?
Will Republicans
recommend cuts in defense and foreign aid and a rollback of the
U.S. military presence in Europe, the Far East and Persian Gulf?
Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham already want to know why we
are not intervening in Syria. Soon, some Republicans will be beating
the drums for strikes on Iran.
Republicans
Chris Christie and Peter King already want to know why Congress
has not forked over $60 billion to repair the damage done to New
Jersey and New York by Hurricane Sandy.
With the GOP
splintering, with Democrats running the Senate and White House,
conservatives must realize: They cannot make policy.
Let the Democrats
take the lead, drive the car, propose the tax hikes, refuse to make
the spending cuts and answer for where we are in 2016, because,
right now, it looks as though we are headed for an even bigger cliff.
For the next
two years, the best offense may be a good defense.
January
5, 2013
Patrick
J. Buchanan [send
him mail] is co-founder and editor of The
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books,
including Where
the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill,
Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide
of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his
website.
Copyright
© 2013 Creators Syndicate
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