Santorum and Romney are following Democrats down the class-warfare rabbit hole
Identity politics is often a winner, and Mr. Santorum does it well. If only he could stop at identifying with this audience, rather than feeling the need to give them special favors.
As he explained this week, he doesn’t agree with the Democrats who are about “raising taxes” and “increasing dependency.” Yet he also doesn’t agree with Republicans who say “let’s just cut taxes, let’s just reduce spending, and everything will be fine.” Rather, he believes his job is to “look at those who are not doing well in our society.”
And so at the heart of the Santorum agenda are policies designed to give special handouts to the working class, simply because they are the working class—and even then only to segments of this group. That’s behind Mr. Santorum’s zero corporate tax on manufacturers, which benefits only Americans working in manufacturing. (Job at Wal-Mart? No soup for you!) It’s behind his plan to triple the child tax credit, which benefits only Americans fortunate enough to have a child. (Stalled love life? No soup for you, either!) Call it preferential populism…
In an election that needs to be about contrasts, this is point Obama. Game on for candidate Santorum, who gets to explain why his own policies for government to reward certain classes of citizens over others are any different than Mr. Obama’s. Or let’s see candidate Romney knock Mr. Obama’s proposals to further tax America’s job creators, those Mr. Romney thinks are doing “just fine.” The bigger risk is that a Republican president actually pursues these distorting economic policies, sacrificing growth.
Blowback
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Nice article. And why I won’t vote either.
Marcus on January 6, 2012 at 8:08 PM
BS article. Must be one of Newt’s supporters. What a joke.
Chudi on January 6, 2012 at 8:11 PM
First class or business class?
Limerick on January 6, 2012 at 8:13 PM
Well, objectively they are doing fine. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. The root of the problem isn’t that America’s job creators don’t have profits or money to spend, it’s consumer confidence and business uncertainty. Businesses are hoarding and stockpiling cash rather than hiring or expanding. That’s the issue that needs to be tackled.
AngusMc on January 6, 2012 at 8:17 PM
Which ones are those?
Mimzey on January 6, 2012 at 8:28 PM
And manufactured goods are in turn exported, thereby increasing our national clout and influence in other countries. Additionally, those goods are also used elsewhere in the United States in other industries. Having the US transition to a services economy is a bad idea. You can’t export a haircut.
And what do children do? They suck up a bunch of resources that families earn. They’re giant expenses. Making it less burdensome and more feasible to raise kdis especially as the cost of raising children continues to increase (especially college) is plain good sense.
Stoic Patriot on January 6, 2012 at 8:45 PM
You had it right the at first with the reason being *uncertainty*. But then if this was your understanding of it, why would you call it *stockpiling and hoarding*? Most businesses I have heard ARE uncertain about the economy’s stability- what if it crashes again? Also, they are worried about the rising cost of 0bamacare. If you owned a business why would you want to promise people a job and then have to turn around and let them go. If you have ever been in a position where you have to let a good employee go, you would know it is a horrible experience.
AZgranny on January 6, 2012 at 8:47 PM
How so? My employer has a 24/7/365 casting call. Yeah, they are an evil oil company, and are bucks up, but they sure aren’t telling HR to advertise only in small print.
Limerick on January 6, 2012 at 8:53 PM
You’ll be shocked to hear I agree with Kimberly that it’s a bad plan, but I don’t think he has any intention of pursuing these policies. I’m thinking Romney is betting on having a conservative congress who will give him legislation to reform the whole damned system, which he will happily sign…
Also the one out Mitt has is that, unlike Obama, he is not asking to raise taxes on anyone (and let’s not forget, ObamaCare is positively loaded with tax increases on individuals, medical device manufacturers, you name it…).
Buy Danish on January 6, 2012 at 9:34 PM
Let me get this straight: the article criticizes the hypocrisy of Santorum claiming to be conservative while proposing that government should actively favor one sector of the economy above others, and you use a Keynesian Multiplier justification to defend him? Do you not grasp the irony of this?
Additionally, why is it automatically the responsibility of the taxpayer to subsidize families because they happen to have children? The concern that children “suck up a bunch of resources that families earn” should deter people from reproducing beyond their means not encourage them to continue to expand and shift the burden to everyone else.
fitzfong on January 6, 2012 at 9:35 PM
I posted this below in the Rubio thread, but I want to draw some attention to it here, as well.
onlineanalyst on January 6, 2012 at 9:39 PM
I said nothing about Keynesian multipliers. I’m not making a GDP growth argument. I’m making a national sovereignty and independence argument.
Because we’re trying to have a society in which the economy isn’t structured in such a way necessitating generational imbalances by making child-rearing essentially impossible. Russia’s dealing with this issue right now, and is going through a population crash.
Stoic Patriot on January 6, 2012 at 9:44 PM
Class warfare is reality. There is more than one class war.
We need to recognize which war needs to be fought, and correctly identify the warring factions.
The class war we must fight and win is the war between the productive class and the political class and their dependents, those who pay no taxes and the industries and unions that depend on government to suck money from the productive class and re-distribute it to them.
The political class and its dependents are parasites, tapeworms and vampires, and they will kill us if we don’t stop them. Of course, they will die too, after they kill us, but they are too stupid. too lazy, and too short-sighted to understand or care.
novaculus on January 6, 2012 at 9:50 PM
yea don’t tax things that peeps produce. what a concept. good allan the country is run by stupid peeps. and yea cut the overall corporate tax. stupid peeps.
newrouter on January 6, 2012 at 9:58 PM
yes let’s “stop families”. yes let’s be stupid.
newrouter on January 6, 2012 at 10:01 PM
You’re putting a populist “Buy American” spin on the Nancy Pelosi $1.00 in unemployment comes back into the economy as $1.75 “argument”. The focus should be making the business climate across all sectors competitive by untying the hands of job creators…reducing taxes, regulations and excess labor costs…not abusing the tax code to artificially boost the expectations of the labor force within certain segments of the economy.
So we should create additional tax incentives so that people who cannot afford to raise more children now or in the forseeable future are encouraged to do so because we’re going to need more future workers in order to maintain an entitlement state that is already unsustainable and is only going to get more so if we don’t reform the entitlements? Brilliant.
fitzfong on January 6, 2012 at 10:48 PM
no idiot. you try to rectify many imbalances by adjusting the budget. like i say “ruled by stupid people”.
newrouter on January 6, 2012 at 11:03 PM
Great idea, a Cash for Clunkers for families. Thanks, genius.
fitzfong on January 6, 2012 at 11:28 PM