TNR Primary: Dean Lite? mmm more fresh waffles!!! [View All]

[DJcairo]

I always thought Howard Dean was politically stupid to propose repealing every cent of the Bush tax cuts. Bush's strategy was to graft a small middle-class tax cut onto a huge upper-class tax cut and pretend the latter part didn't exist. Why walk into his trap by fighting that, rather than conceding it and fighting the really noxious part? Still, I gave Dean credit for political courage.

Now Dean seems to be backing away from that stance. As the Associated Press reported yesterday: "At a campaign stop, Dean made his now familiar call for repealing President Bush's tax cuts--but with the unfamiliar qualifier 'some.' Answering a question about foreign aid, Dean said he would continue it, 'but I do plan to get rid of some of the tax cuts to (former Enron Corp. chief) Ken Lay and the boys.'" Perhaps now that Dean sees he has a chance to win the nomination, he's getting wise to the general-election trap that awaits him for wanting to raise taxes on the middel class. But where does that leave his campaign? Remember, Dean has spent months flaying his primary opponents for being in favor of any tax cuts at all: "What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts," he likes to say. Now it looks like Dean favors the same thing. Will he take back all that demagoguery about "Bush lite"? Don't count on it.

http://www.tnr.com/primary/index.mhtml?pid=738