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"NO Tax cuts for the RICH!!!!" You can just hear them on the left shouting this incessantly for years. MoveOn.org ran ads saying they want to repeal tax cuts for the rich. Tim Geithner said it. Krugman said it, over and over. Obama CAMPAIGNED on it. Repeal the tax cuts on the rich!
It wasn't that Democratic politicians particularly cared about the deficit; as we have seen recently, Obama has had the largest deficits since WWII. His deficits have been 400% of Bush's.
And it's not like the tax cuts on the rich mean anything considerable to the deficit. As we stated here, tax cuts for the rich are only 3% of the deficit this year. Meaning even if we repealed the tax cuts for the rich...we'd still be left with 97% of the deficit.
So it clearly hasn't been the deficit that has motivated Democrats to attack, it's just been blind, stupid, bitter jealousy. They don't care if the tax increases will hurt the economy, they just want to punish rich people by taking more of their own money.
And their drumbeat of class warfare, us against "the rich", has been a tune they have been playing for a long time.
But look what Obama just did: he just made a bargain with the GOP (and many Senate Democrats)...to keep the tax cuts "on the rich".
Liberals are apoplectic, betrayed, and in complete and utter shock. How could Obama let this happen? How could he not satisfy our bloodlust for punishment of the rich?
It's as if Obama is now the reverse of Bush '92; he will be punished by his own party for going against the party orthodoxy on taxes.
And here is where the Democrats have failed; their incessant attacks on these tax cuts "for the rich" are now biting them, and biting them back hard. They whipped up the liberal masses against the tax cuts for the rich, and now that a Democrat Obama has extended them, it has fractured the party (even further). How can liberals continue to support Obama for extending the tax cuts on the rich, after they have been told for years that the enemy is the Bush tax cuts on the rich?
The years of whipping up the emotions (anger, hatred) of liberals against the tax cuts for the rich, pushing all logic aside, has now made them immune to Obama's passive and lame justification for his "treason" to the left. All the raw emotions that Democrats have used to further their own cause...are now being used against them.
Don't expect many on the left to vote Republican; but how can they in good conscience vote for Obama for another term? This damages the Democratic "brand" of Obama, perhaps irretrievably.
Their class warfare hysteria, so carefully cultivated to use the basest of emotions, has now bit themselves. And bit themselves hard.
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