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Despite Dems And RINOs, We Got Our Tax Cut
By Tim Siggia
May 29, 2003
Well, fellow Rich People (anyone who pays any federal income tax is Rich), we got our tax cut -- not the one President Bush had hoped for ($726 billion), or the one the House of Representatives passed ($550 billion), but a $350 billion tax cut passed by the Senate, which President Bush will sign. Half a loaf is better than none, as they say, and even though $350 billion isn't even half of what the president originally proposed, it nonetheless represents a victory for him, and for us. We'll start noticing the difference in our paychecks in July.
It came, of course, by the narrowest of margins. The RINO Factor figured significantly here, and had it not been for two Democratic senators who came across the aisle to support the president, Vice President Cheney wouldn't have been able to cast the tie-breaking vote that passed the measure. Once again, we owe a debt of gratitude to Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) for coming over to our side. Thanks to them, the RINOs failed in their attempt to sabotage their own party.
Of course, not everyone who has been previously called a RINO is being referred to here. Let's just say that the three culprits in question bore no surprises for us when they were identified. Perhaps the most undependable of the three was Sen. Olympia Snowe (RINO-Vt.), and in this context I use the word "undependable" in an almost complimentary context. One never knows for sure which way Snowe is going to vote until roll call -- unless, of course, she has made her intentions known ahead of time. Far more dependable in this sense of the word is Sen. Lincoln Chafee (RINO-R.I.) Like his father before him, Chafee is the living, breathing definition of RINO, and a continuing embarrassment to his party -- so much so that for a time there was public speculation on whether he might be the next Jim Jeffords.
But if even if Chafee is the flip side of everything a Republican should be, he at least cannot be faulted for his honesty. Why he continues to run as a Republican is cause for much head scratching, but Chafee, to his credit, has never made any pretense of being conservative. The same cannot be said of Renegade Number 3, however: none other than Sen. John McCain (RINO-Ariz.) Ever the self-styled maverick, McCain chose once again to abandon his party and his president, and vote with his soul-mates on the other side of the aisle. McCain, it will be remembered, was last year named as RINO Of The Year by the conservative journal Human Events for his role in the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, and he no doubt considers this title an honor. What is truly astounding is that despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, McCain still astonishingly calls himself a conservative -- and a Reagan conservative at that! Even more astounding is to know that there are people out there who actually believe him when he makes this claim! (If this is an example of McCain's "straight talk", it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he agrees with Dan Rather's appraisal of Bill Clinton as an honest man.)
Nevertheless, the $350 billion tax cut will be enacted upon the president's signature, and all across America liberals are seething with rage. And well they should, for most of them know, even if they won't admit it, that every time free-market capitalism is given a chance to work, it works! And so it will again, just as Democrat president Jack Kennedy said it would over 40 years ago (and did). All of which means, of course, that when the economy recovers, as it has already begun to, the Democrats will have their final campaign issue taken from them by the man they branded a dimwit, who they now will be unable to stop from gaining a second term in 2004.
Happy days are here again, both for the Rich and for those who would like to be.
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