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Small Thinking
Rick Santorum coyly promised a group of Detroit business leaders Thursday that his plan to restore manufacturing and revive the economy was just a little different than those of the other candidates. The plan he then described was nothing more than a rehash of tired Republican ideas stretching back decades.
Name a tax, and he proposed to cut it: every income-tax rate, including, of course, that on the highest earners. The already low tax on capital gains. The tax on dividends. The corporate tax. And he would simply eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.
Then, of course, come the spending cuts: $1 trillion a year for five years. He didnt bother to list the hundreds of vital programs that would be devastated in the process. He had one easy prescription for any given safety-net program for the poor: Cap it, cut it, freeze it, and block-grant it to the states. And inevitably there was the call for far more domestic oil drilling.
But perhaps his most jarring assertion especially in Michigan, which has suffered more than most from devastating unemployment was that many people are deliberately staying out of the work force in order to luxuriate in their unemployment benefits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/opinion/small-thinking.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
pkdu
(3,977 posts)sad sally
(2,627 posts)And while he said he supports economic opportunity for all, Santorum said income inequality is good.
"Why? Because people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace and that's as it should be," he said.
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/onpolitix/us_politics/santorum-to-talk-in-detroit-thursday
elleng
(130,861 posts)renie408
(9,854 posts)Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)And then I want to see the full, unvarnished conservative 'big picture' for this country laid out clearly for the American voter. I think Rick would be the no-apologies candidate who'll happily lay out the complete vision in the general election. I just don't see him backtracking and tacking to the left...he's way too invested in his conservative fantasy. He believes it...with a self-righteous certitude.
Then I want to watch this vision defeated so decisively that the term 'conservative' will become the epithet that the term 'liberal' never was.