Category: John McCain/Sarah Palin

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that the presidential candidates dualed over tax cuts at their respective rallies today;

“At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” the Republican presidential nominee said in a radio address. “Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut. It’s just another government giveaway.”

At an afternoon McCain rally in Woodbridge, Va., a woman yelled out about Obama, “He’s a socialist!”

From St. Louis, Sen. Obama replied that both candidates want to cut taxes. But he said he would cut taxes for working Americans where Sen. McCain would favor corporations and wealthy taxpayers.

“John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare,’” he said.

Earlier this week, I wrote about an exchange on Fox News between Sheppard Smith and Obama’s economic advisor;

When Smith called Goulsby on the “tax cut for 95% of Americans” lie and mentioned that 45% of Americans don’t pay income taxes, Goulsby got defensive and spit out that all working Americans pay payroll taxes (the latest camoflage word for Social Security taxes).

Smith called it a “redistribution of wealth” and Goulsby got defensive again. The rebate wasn’t coming from other tax payers, it was a refund of payroll taxes.

So Smith asked Goulsby if Obama was going to cut payroll taxes and Goulsby answered that a cut in social security taxes would adversely affect the “Social Security Trust Fund” (whatever that is), but that Obama would refund ($500?) to low income workers. So that if their tax balance on April 15th is $0, they’d get a ($500?) check from the IRS, which is supposedly a rebate on their Social Security taxes.

So, it’s not a tax cut, by any standard…it’s giving one group of citizens money that another group of citizens earned. Redistribution of wealth. Confederate Yankee writes that some of what Obama counts as his tax cut is just not ending some of the Bush tax cuts. Henry Louis Gonzalez at Babalu Blog writes;

Obama says he’s only going to raise taxes on people who make $250,000 or more. But he also says he’ll roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top 5 percent. Notice that to be in the top 5% you need an Adjusted Gross Income of $153,542. Now a taxpayer that has an AGI of $150k is doing quite well, but is this person rich? Well that depends. That money goes a lot further in Wyoming than Manhattan.

Obama claims that McCain has redefined tax cuts…but if the definition of tax cuts has changed it’s coming from the Obama camp. A tax cut is keeping more of your own money, not getting someone else’s money.

Obama wants to spend another $185 billion on road projects and extending unemployment benefits instead of giving tax cuts to the people who’ll ultimately create jobs. His bottom-up strategy for the economy is what extended the Depression.

When Franklin Roosevelt became president, unemployment was 25%, on Sept. 1, 1939, the day World War II began, unemployment was at 19%. Six years of the National Recovery Act barely put a dent in unemployment. And that’s what those same tired Democrat policies will do in this century.

The other day, characteristically John McCain pleaded with supporters to not be afraid of Barack Obama (video at LGF) . Attendees booed him.  Bloggers booed. So how did that bit of reaching across the aisle work for McCain ? Well the WSJ’s Washington Wire reports that it got him called a reincarnation of Democrat segregationist governor and presidential candidate George Wallace by John Lewis;

Rep. John Lewis, an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, compared Republican presidential nominee John McCain to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a legendary segregationist. Lewis (D, Ga.) said that McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, are “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.”

[…]

“What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse,” he wrote.

He went on to compare the Republican candidates to Wallace, who ran unsuccessfully for president.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama,” Lewis wrote. “As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all.”

So John McCain responds with more feel-good, happy talk;

“Congressman John Lewis’ comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale,” he said in a written statement. “I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.”

The Obama campaign responds as one might expect them to respond;

“Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies,” Burton said. “But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night.”

I guess that the democrats don’t see that they’re ones fueling the “hateful rhetoric”, calling us racists,  describing us as hicks and gun-clinging whackos. I hope they trot out some more race pimps like Lewis – it’ll only galvanize the folks that make this country work against Obama in these finals weeks.

Michelle Malkin says; Look who’s gripped by insane rage.