Hi clo,
Horns of a dilemma. The "tax-cutting" party is faced with a clash with their "deficit" principle.
At least, many Republicans like to think that these are principles which cannot be abridged. Hence, your Tea Party.
But oddly enough, Republicans themselves actually water these principles when they go off and do actual politics.
1. Tax cuts are useful for the rich (whom they call the "job creators") but not so much for the middle class (the people who use their garages for purposes other than parking cars). I guess many Republicans assume that companies like HP, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook were started by billionaires, and that existing billionaires like to risk their financial portfolios on new ideas, as opposed to being mainly focused on conserving their capital.
2. Deficits matter when it comes to Democratic priorities but not when the concerns are Republican ones, such as defence. So paying for a vast military-industrial complex is A-OK; whereas paying for poverty programs or for health care infringes the ideal.
So, yes, Obama is making them confront the paradox which is embedded within the current Republican theory of itself.
- They are not the party of universal tax cuts, though they represent themselves that way. They favour incumbent wealth over entrepreneurship. And they have little interest in the middle class.
- They are not the party of balanced budgets, they are the party which hates social programs and they are using deficits as cover for their beliefs.
At least Reagan believed that he was incentivising innovation. It didn't work out that way, but I think he was sincere. This lot of Republicans believe what they ought to know ain't so.
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