Words.
"It’s one thing for a political party to lose its moral bearings – after all, community values evolve, and large swaths of people and their elected representatives can end up on the wrong side of history on such questions as slavery, suffrage, and civil rights. But when a party loses its mathematical bearings – well, that’s a little shocking.
Yet that’s what’s happened to the Republican Party. The debt ceiling endgame has exposed the denial gripping the GOP in the face of the inevitable loss of “lower taxes” as the core of the party’s identity. You can feel the Republicans’ pain; tax cuts have been the party’s defining issue since Ronald Reagan rode them to power in 1980. But in an aging America, the numbers no longer work, and Republicans have failed to develop a new conservative vision to replace their fading mantra.
...Here’s the point: Even if we enacted the platonic ideal of sane entitlement reform, and trimmed defense (as we need to), Republican budget math still doesn’t come close to adding up. Instead, as my colleagues at the Center for American Progress have shown, shrinking spending to sub-Reagan levels while retiring the boomers would involve dramatic cuts in everything else Americans think of as government – from national parks to NASA to the FBI to cancer research to student loans.
So why does the GOP pretend otherwise? Because acknowledging mathematical reality is too politically painful. Because uttering this simple phrase – “to accommodate the retirement of the baby boomers, taxes will need to rise” – is forbidden by official Republican doctrine.
...My own view is that this means slashing payroll taxes and corporate income taxes, while more than offsetting those tax cuts with higher taxes on consumption and dirty energy. But we can’t even get to this conversation until Republicans relinquish the fantasy that we can keep cutting overall taxes as America ages.
At bottom, this fantasy masks fear. Republicans’ refusal to let go of the old time religion shows how little work the party has done to craft an agenda equal to America’s current challenges. The party has abandoned problem-solving for brand preservation. If tax cuts aren’t our defining issue, Republican pols ask themselves, what distinguishes us from Democrats? Why should voters choose us?
Maybe the Gang of Six can end the GOP’s war on math, but I’m skeptical. For now, if it’s a choice between defying math and staring into this policy and political abyss, Republicans choose defiance."
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