President Obama continued his campaign to demonize his opponents in the sequester standoff yesterday. Appearing on the radio show of racial huckster Al Sharpton, the president again attempted to frame the issue facing the country as one that pit the middle class and the poor against the wealthy. If Republicans refused to accede to his demands for a budget solution that would include more tax hikes, it was because affection for the wealthy was the core principle at the heart of their political coalition:
My sense is that their basic view is that nothing is important enough to raise taxes on wealthy individuals or corporations. And they would prefer to see these kinds of cuts that could slow down our recovery over closing tax loopholes, and that’s the thing that binds their party together at this point.
This is not just false but the kind of over-the-top rhetoric that gives the lie to the president’s pose of moderation and a willingness to reach out across the aisle. His claim that the rich don’t pay taxes is also false. So is the notion that it is only the wealthy who are being hurt by the government’s appetite for more “revenue” on his watch, as every American–be they rich, middle class or poor–found out last month when they saw their take-home pay drastically reduced by the increase in the payroll tax. But there is more to this debate than just Obama’s penchant for political talk. Conservatives do oppose tax increases as a general principle–not because they see it as their job to defend the wealthy but because they rightly understand their proper role as defending all Americans against the expansion of government power.
