On the Right, the rhetorical firepower is with the tax-cutters. If you’re a conservative who believes that, as Stuart Taylor Jr. beautifully put it, the Bush administration “is obsessed with shifting the tax burden from the wealthiest Americans to future generations,” you’re out of luck. Some blame K Street. I blame Ramesh Ponnuru. Because Ponnuru, National Review‘s domestic policy guru, is scarily smart, he can be scarily persuasive. You might think I’m mad, which is entirely true. But that’s irrelevant. Dubious messenger aside, I can assure you that there’s something to what one might call the “Unified Ponnuru Theory” (or UPT, like UPN, but “urban”).
Earlier this month, Ponnuru argued against comprehensive tax reform. In his view, the ’86 reforms were a failure. Rather than invest precious political capital in a sweeping overhaul, Ponnuru felt that conservatives should seek to move gradually in the direction of a consumption tax-“Operation Norquist,” for those of you sold on the “Unified Norquist Theory.” John Mueller persuaded me otherwise, and I fulminated at considerable length in this post. A comprehensive reform that would broaden the base and lower rates struck me as the right thing to do.
Well, it looks like the Bush administration disagrees. Plans for a serious overhaul seem to have been abandoned. Entrenching and expanding vast tax breaks will be the order of the day. Mere coincidence? Or is Ponnuru the Rasputin-like figure behind the move? That remains to be seen. Suffice to say, I have my suspicions.
Rather than spend countless millions on the Democrats, George Soros would be wise to endow the “Ponnuru Chair in Socialistic Studies” at an elite university, all in the hopes of wooing Ponnuru to the dark side. This would give conservative reformers the opening we need to soak the idle rich and shower largesse on families with children, in the process giving the GOP a permanent majority, until we’re annexed by Canada, at which point we’ll be forced to watch endless repeats of “Degrassi: The Next Generation”-a fate that, though I’m loathe to admit it, I’d heartily embrace.
Somehow I don’t think this is going to work out.
— Reihan
The Dish 