Nearly all viable presidential candidates are extremely rich. Obama is himself quite rich, though not exactly Kennedy/Bush/Kerry/Romney rich. The next GOP nominee might not be quite as cartoonish a plutocrat as Romney, but he will almost certainly be wealthy, and, crucially, will almost certainly promote an agenda that would exacerbate economic inequality. When Clinton said “we pay ordinary income tax” she wasn’t just taking a gratuitous jab backwards at Romney for paying taxes at a sub-15 percent rate. She was presaging an agenda that will almost certainly call for eliminating or reducing tax preferences that allow an entire class of people of great wealth to reduce their effective tax rates. I don’t know if she’ll propose jacking up the capital gains tax, or closing the carried-interest loophole. I don’t know if she’ll target individual tax loopholes, or advocate for capping tax expenditure benefits or anything about what her economic agenda will look like. But I am 100 percent confident it will include some measures along these lines, and nearly as confident that the Republican candidate will oppose it in every particular.
This is the GOP’s core problem. Clinton’s gaffes don’t really solve it for them. These jabs at her are perfectly defensible. But if they betray a belief that the political problems with their agenda are superficial, or can be neutralized by a less imperfect messenger, then they are exposing their own liability in an attempt to exacerbate one of Hillary’s.
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