Rhetorical Hyperbole about Taxes

It’s the rhetoric, stupid.

Those of us who do not know enough about tax policy to analyze the new Republican tax bill are drawn to the Democratic communications strategy. You will note that the Trump administration, having driven people crazy for a year with compulsive tweeting, managed to lose, not just a senate seat in Alabama, but also the communications war over the tax bill. One can only imagine how the neophyte White House communications director—that would be Hope Hicks— got her job... and why she is so ineffective at it.

Considering the attention that the average Trump tweet attracts, you might understand why Democrats believe that, if they want to be heard, they must speak the loudest. Considering that the American people were outraged at the Obama administration, Democrats must believe that they must try to channel American outrage and aim it at Donald Trump.

One reason Democrats lost in 2016 was that the Obama administration was filled with pusillanimous cowards. It projected weakness around the world and tossed national pride into the dustbin of history. Somewhere in their minds Democrats know that they need to show themselves to be strong and empowered. Apparently, they believe that the best way to do so is to scream loudest and indulge every manner of rhetorical extremism.

Up until now, it seems to be working. The more extreme the rhetoric, the more crazed the Democrats sound, the lower Trump’s approval numbers go. As of now the Democrats are poised to win back the House of Representatives, by a healthy margin, so they must believe that their new Resist and scream louder than everyone else strategy is working.  Of course, it has been working against a president whose accomplishments have been drowned out by extremist political rhetoric, and also, to be fair, by a president who has an uncanny knack for stepping on his own achievements.

Anyway, in the midst of the Trump administration’s first major legislative victory, the tax cut bill, serious Democratic politicians and their media satraps have completely lost their minds. They have become unhinged and deranged and hysterical. You would think that some preternatural horror had descended on the earth when-- get this-- the tax rate on the highest earners has been cut from 39% to 37%. Start waving the garlic. The end is nigh.

As I say, the Democrats have indulged this appalling offense to Reason because they think it works. Or at least it works for their base constituents… which tells us something not-too-nice about their base constituents’ IQs.

Newly liberalized New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, calls the Democrats out on their extremist rhetoric. Apparently, he wants to point them toward recovery. Do they need a 12 Step program for their addiction to rhetorical hyperbole? 

If they keep it up, Stephens explains, the American people will discover early next year, when their pay stubs reflect the increased standard deduction and increased childcare credit, that they have been lied to. Or at least if they do not live in high state and local tax states like New York, and make over $100,000 they will see their taxes decline. Wealthy New Yorkers and Californians might very well see their taxes increase, but they were not going to vote Republican anyway.

Stephens picks out some of the most salient Democratic rhetoric:

The bill has variously been described as “a disaster,” “one of the great robberies” of history, and a “massive attack” on the middle class — and that’s just Bernie Sanders. Other critics say it will explode the deficit, enrich the undeserving rich, immiserate the underserved poor, and ring a “death knell” for the sinking middle class. Nancy Pelosi calls it a “Frankenstein,” albeit one that will return to kill its Republican creators.

That’s not all, folks. Other Democrats have suggested that it is, in Stephens’ words, a “moral abomination,” a horror that compares to the Holocaust and the crucifixion. It's Armageddon all over again.

As it happens, Democrats have long favored much of what is in the bill. But,why bother with  inconvenient truths when you can rant and rave like a deranged Banshee. (Does this mean that some Banshees are not deranged? I yield to the expertise of others on this question.)

Stephens writes:

But the suggestion by senior Democrats that it is now a moral abomination to enact the very type of tax reform they themselves favored until quite recently smacks of partisan dishonesty, if not ideological hysteria. Many developed countries, including Germany, Sweden and Britain, have all slashed their corporate rates in recent years. Lo, the sky did not fall.

Now to the bad politics. Democrats think it’s politically smart to oppose the bill because some 58 percent of Americans were against it, according to a recent poll.

A Times analysis of the poll also found that half of the people who will get a tax cut under the bill don’t think they’re going to get one, likely out of distrust for the president.

It is richly ironic to imagine that the Democrats are going all in—rhetorically speaking—because they have convinced themselves that the bill is unpopular. As it happens, Stephens kindly points out to them, the vast majority of the American people, transfixed by extremist rhetoric, do not know what is in the bill. When they find out, it’s not going to be a happy day to be a Democrat.

Stephens says:

But nothing is so splendid in life or politics as a good surprise, and Democrats have positioned themselves to be on the wrong side of it. In 2018, according to the Tax Policy Center, 91 percent of middle-income filers will get a tax cut, averaging close to $1,100. That’s real money, or at least enough to give Donald Trump and congressional Republicans a good opening for a “we told you so” moment.

You would think that Donald Trump has driven his political opponents stark, raving mad. Was that the strategy all along? With the tax law, Democrats seem to have lost touch with their rational faculties and have been reduced to crying out in the political wilderness. Up until now, it seems to have worked. That does not mean that it will always work.

Stephens concludes:

For now, the G.O.P.’s legislative triumph is only being sweetened by the wildly overblown reaction to it. Why liberals would want to give the administration a holiday gift like this is beyond me, but, anyway, Merry Christmas.