Forget the Islamofascists. Within the span of only a few days, that greatest and even existential threat to this nation is now but a memory, and a distant one at that.
Such is the revised appraisal of the once-great jingoist party, which only yesterday had voters damn near apoplectic over the coming hordes of swarthy terrorists with daggers in their teeth and white women on their mind. But that danger, it would seem, has passed. Why, we know not. All we do know is that what now plagues America -- what is shaking her to her very foundations -- is ... an excessive corporate income tax.
That, anyway, seems to be the one and only consensus among the leading Republican presidential candidates as they scour the elimination state of Florida this week in search of panacea lovers.
Naturally the indistinguishable Moe, Larry and Curly also plead for the permanency of Bush's tax cuts, but that's a given and way down the road. No, what this nation now needs most, other than a good 5-cent cigar, is to reduce the burden on the corporate class. The poor dears have suffered too long, I guess, under the oppressive egalitarianism of George W. Bush.
The assorted campaigns' 180 away from the erstwhile greatest threat "is natural," said the American Enterprise Institute's Kevin Hassett, who sidelines as a McCain economic adviser. "When the economy is close to recession, if not in recession," said he to the St. Petersburg Times, "voters think long and hard about what the different candidates have to say."
In John's case, voters may want to think long and hard about what he said just a few weeks ago; that being that "the issue of economics is not something that I've understood as well as I should."
One suspects that is what led Mr. McCain to conclude this business about cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent as the essential cure for what ails us. Why it took Moe this long to locate his Republican cookie-cutter is beyond me, but hey, a belated epiphany is still an epiphany.
Mitt Romney's cure-all also includes slashing the corporate tax rate, of course, but in his model from 35 to 20 percent. Oh, that Mitt. He always has to do the other boys one better.
Mitt did say one thing, however, that surely ranks as the most enlightened comment yet made on the campaign trail by any GOP candidate: "People recognize now more than ever that it makes a difference having a president who has actually had a job in the private sector."
Yowza! -- what a difference indeed, especially if those jobs were with the oil industry and baseball clubs. Larry, this new-fangled enlightenment stuff behooves you not. You had best stick with your previous platitudes. Don't try getting creative.
And then there's Curly Giuliani, who's now auditioning for the lead role in yet another remake of "The Desperate Hours." His cries of "9/11" have been reduced to just "911." Won't the plucky Floridians please save this poor man?
We'll see, but it ain't lookin' good, even though he too has vacated the Islamofascist boat and plunged over the supply side.
Yes, you guessed it, we need to cut those corporate rates, says the mayor. We've been disincentivizing (if I were running, my sole platform would be to ban every English word ending in "ize") the corporately oppressed for too long. Oh, how they've struggled mightily against the wealth-devouring working classes lo these many years, with nary the motivation to earn even one more dollar.
Curly has also proposed "a simpler tax system with only three tax brackets: 10, 15 and 30 percent." The Times story failed to note whether he listed those brackets in ascending or descending-income order. Stay tuned.
How all this Republican rubbish could work on even conservative citizens of the elimination state is beyond me. But work it must; otherwise Moe, Larry and Curly wouldn't be selling it.
What "it" ignores, of course, is the one historical truism of our one, truly Great Depression: When the middling classes -- remember them, guys? -- fail to earn enough to buy all the junk they produce for their employers, the economy hits the skids. Aggressive downturns are, that is, fundamentally demand-sided.
The plutocracy has been milking this nation's workers for so long and so happily and comfortably, it thought the party would never end. But welcome, oh ye of supply-side inevitability, to the Great Re-Awakening.
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