{"id":6731,"date":"2006-02-28T14:53:03","date_gmt":"2006-02-28T19:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/6731.html"},"modified":"2006-02-28T14:53:03","modified_gmt":"2006-02-28T19:53:03","slug":"mccain-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-20\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain, 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I worked for one of the Republicans running for president in 2008, I’d count on John McCain’s votes against Bush’s tax cuts as the deal-breaker in the GOP primaries. When it comes to presidential politics, Republicans generally aren’t open to compromise anyway, but opposition to sweeping tax cuts is a particularly tough sell.<\/p>\n

And yet, to his credit, McCain has been one of only a handful of Republican senators to oppose Bush’s tax policies. When Bush’s 2001 tax cuts went to the Senate floor, McCain was one of two Senate Republicans to vote “no.” He said at the time, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.” Two years later, another tax-cut bill came to the floor, and McCain voted against it again, citing the rising deficit.<\/p>\n

Now, however, the presidential players are struggling for position — and guess who’s come around<\/a> on Bush’s tax cuts?<\/p>\n

Sen. John McCain, who has consistently opposed President Bush’s tax cuts, recently voted to extend some of them, a move conservatives say is a political flip-flop intended to further his White House ambitions.<\/p>\n

The Arizona Republican, who is the early front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination in 2008, surprised tax-cut proponents last week when he voted to continue Mr. Bush’s tax cuts on capital gains and dividends and other tax breaks in a $70 billion Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Asked to explain his reversal, McCain said<\/a>, “American businesses and investors need a stable and predictable tax policy to continue contributing to the growth of the economy.” His previous commitment to deficit reduction? McCain didn’t mention it. His belief that it’s irresponsible to have so many benefits go to the wealthy? McCain seems to have forgotten about that, too.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of problems with this, not the least of which is the bizarre inconsistencies for a man who prides himself on commitment to “principle.” It’s also interesting that few of the people McCain hopes to impress with his flip-flop are buying into McCain 2.0<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

“It’s a big flip-flop, but I’m happy he’s flopped,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.<\/p>\n

“It looks like a further morphing of McCain into George W. Bush. He’s mailing to his list of campaign contributors, and now he’s supporting the tax cuts,” said economist Larry Hunter, a longtime Republican tax-cut strategist.<\/p>\n

“It looks political to me. It runs counter to his whole past behavior. He’s got to appeal to the base of the party. I don’t think there is a Republican in the land who can get the nomination who voted against the tax cuts,” said Mr. Hunter, now a senior fellow at the Policy Institute for Innovation. “He’s certainly not a supply-sider. He doesn’t subscribe to the Reagan economic approach that tax cuts stimulate increased growth,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCain should probably have just stuck to what was a fiscally-responsible approach. If he’s consistent, he can at least tout his steadfastness. But by reversing course, McCain is opening himself up to a more difficult political problem: he opposed Bush’s tax cuts on several occasions and<\/i> he flip-flopped on the issue for purely cynical reasons.<\/p>\n

It’s not a good combination — and there’s no real “straight talk” explaination to justify it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I worked for one of the Republicans running for president in 2008, I’d count on John McCain’s votes against Bush’s tax cuts as the deal-breaker in the GOP primaries. When it comes to presidential politics, Republicans generally aren’t open to compromise anyway, but opposition to sweeping tax cuts is a particularly tough sell. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}