Republican Political Malpractice

The top line numbers in the new CBS/New York Times poll are pretty stunning, but what really stood out for me was this number:

[W]hich candidate will raise your taxes? Respondents, by 51% to 46%, say it's McCain.

That's staggering. The Republican party has spent the last twenty years dogmatically clinging to a pledge not to raise taxes and claiming, with every waking breath, that their Democratic opponents will raise taxes. And since 1992, not a single Republican politician at the federal level has voted for a tax increase. The last tax increase passed by Congress--in 1993--passed without a single Republican vote.

And yet 51% of voters think that McCain is more likely to raise their taxes. That's a testament to 1) how completely lacking in credibility both the GOP and John McCain are right now, and 2) McCain's decision to put forward one of the worst health care plans ever endorsed by a major party candidate.

For reasons that others have already explained quite well, McCain's plan is a bad one; it creates all the wrong incentives and would likely result both in lower quality care and an increase in the ranks of the uninsured. But on top of that, it's just really bad politics. It involves a major tax increase that affects everyone and a tax credit that doesn't obviously offset that increase in all circumstances.

The McCain campaign can complain all they want about Obama's claim that this amounts to a tax increase, but we all know that if the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would demagogue the hell out of such a plan. After all, McCain and his campaign still claim in every ad that Obama is going to raise your taxes, even though they have no specific proposal to point to. Imagine what they'd do if Obama actually planned--as McCain does--to impose a major new tax on the middle class. They would have a field day and would completely ignore the part of the plan that granted a (supposedly) offsetting tax credit. Obama at least mentions the tax credit in his critique ("with one hand he giveth, with the other he taketh away").

The other major unforced error on McCain's part was allowing Obama to outflank him on middle class tax cuts. Obama can honestly say--and he never misses a chance--that the vast majority of Americans would do better under his plan. McCain's tax cut plan is already completely unrealistic and reckless, so why not just add some tax relief for the middle class too? It makes no sense.

McCain is losing to Obama on a definitional Republican issue. Obama gets some credit for that, but mostly it's the result of political practice on McCain's part.