Emerging Political Trend: More Taxes, Please!

Despite the Tea Party rhetoric of cutting taxes and limiting spending, Americans are poised for supporting tax increase measures, according to this study.

Most of these votes are cast in order to maintain schools, safety and other services viewed as essential. Faced with a radical vision of their communities left without adequate schools, safety or other services, Americans are rejecting the Republican agenda of tax-slashing and cutting spending.

Don’t hope for a victory for the Republicans in November. All politics is local, and in communities across the country American are roundly rejecting the Republican agenda. While the rhetoric of cutting taxes and spending sounds good in principle, and it seems to generate lots of media heat for the Tea Party, it is not something that most Americans are willing to actually entertain when it comes to a reduction in the quality of life in their communities. In Colorado a measure would slash the property tax by fifty percent, but it has no takers. Colorado is an interesting case because it was the only state in the nation to pass a constitutional amendment meant to limit spending, the TABOR amendment, at the height of the Contract with America era. In that state, the anti-tax fervor of the early 90s is a memory now. It seems that the Republican Revolution built over the last three decades on tax-cutting is all but dead at the local level.

But the Republican platform is based entirely on cutting taxes and government spending, aside from cultural wedge issues like gay marriage, which finds no traction in the current election. If Americans are unwilling to decimate their communities by drastically reducing local government ability to tax and pay for services, why would they be willing to vote Republican in November if it meant decimating health care, Social Security and Medicare—all services that the Republicans plan to slash and cut if they take control of Congress. Like the essential services that Americans are willing to support in their communities, those programs are also essential to millions of voters and their families.

But what about the anger you hear so much about from pundits? The fact is that there isn’t any anger out there. What pundits and spin doctors are really talking about when they talk about anger is “crazy,” as in cutting critical services or rounding up illegal immigrants as happened in the 1950s when Eisenhower deported tens of thousands, but there is no crazy out there, no matter how “angry” the voters may feel.