For the record, I’ll vote for John McCain in November. I’ll learn to love him. It won’t be easy.
McCain has explained that he voted aginst the Bush tax cuts because Congress failed to cut spending, but that is precisely the problem with McCain and taxes: he does not understand pro-growth tax-cutting. If he did, he wouldn’t counter-balance cutting marginal income-tax rates and accelerating capital depreciation against spending cuts.
The simple fact is that the GOP did not have the political muscle to force both tax and spending cuts in 2003, so they chose pro-growth tax cuts. These tax cuts were highly effective at promoting economic growth, which increased tax revenues and reduced the federal budget deficit in each growth year. If the Congress had gone along with McCain on the Bush tax cuts, we would have neither enjoyed the economic growth of 2003-2007, nor reduced the budget deficit.
I’m as disgusted as anyone at the Republican Party’s abandonment of “limiting the size and scope of government” as a guiding principle, but I don’t believe I’m suffering from "McCain Derangement Syndrome” just because I refuse to recant the contention that McCain’s vote against President Bush’s tax cuts was not a Conservative position.
If The Gipper had taken the same “principled” stand as McCain did, refusing to cut taxes because Congress refused to cut spending, the Reagan tax cuts and all the good that resulted would have never happened. That's something that any Reagan Revolution “foot soldier” ought to understand.
