the fact is (as that excellent Bruce Bartlett piece pointed out, the Pres and much of the dems are already right of center, I agree that the money will start to flow towards getting what they want from right of center dems (folks like Obama, Geitner, Begich, Clinton, Baucus, Pryor, Landrieu, Hagan, and T. Johnson (not the R Johnson wack from WI)).
The grand bargain, to satisfy the big money and address fiscal reality, will ultimately come down to addressing the corporate tax rate ... increasing individual rates and rates (losing the low dividend and cap gain rates) in exchange for lowering the corporate tax rate.
It will be a hard sell to the left, and a hard sell to the right. But that is the deal, I think David Brooks has his finger on that.
Move away from using the code to engineer corporate behavior (loopholes) move away from using the code to engineer individual behavior (deductions/loop-holes) treat earnings equally (div, cap gain, wages, soc.sec) and lower the bloody corporate tax rate.
Tough sell.
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