GOP’s sales-pitch swindle: Why Dems need to push Obamacare harder

[DonViejo]

When Republicans do something, they sell it big time. With the left tentative on the ACA, here's what's at stake

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

One of President George W. Bush’s first moves in office was the fulfillment of his campaign pledge to cut taxes. You’ll recall that he had proclaimed, ”It’s your money, you paid for it” and “a tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness.” And he meant it. All Republicans believe that tax cuts are the answer to every problem. Recession? Yes, that makes sense. Boom? Absolutely, it’s your money! High unemployment? Why are you asking? Of course. Low unemployment? It’s your money! And around and around it goes.

Back in 2000, even though President Bush was elected to the presidency by a single vote on the Supreme Court, there was no appetite among Democrats for the kind of battle such an outcome would have produced among Republicans and they eagerly signed on to the new president’s agenda. Those tax cuts were immediately enacted on a bipartisan basis with the only slight modification being the “sunset” several years out so that the president didn’t have to answer for the explosive deficit projections his tax cuts would cause down the road. (If you’ve followed the last few years of budget deals you know exactly what a land mine that turned out to be.) It was very kind of the Democrats to be so generous to a man who had stolen the presidency through the help of his own brother and a partisan Supreme Court, but help him they did.

But it’s what he did next that is so instructive to our politics today. George W. Bush not only got these tax cuts passed, he spent tens of millions in taxpayer money taking credit for it. As the longtime columnist for the Baltimore Sun Jules Whitcover memorably put it:

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http://www.salon.com/2014/07/17/gops_sales_pitch_swindle_why_dems_need_to_push_obamacare_harder/