John Harwood, NYT: Obama's tax policy targets the rich. [View all]

[DevonRex]

WASHINGTON — Partisan clashes over President Obama’s proposed tax increases have obscured something remarkable: that the affluent Americans targeted by his policy represent a growing share of his own party’s base.

You would not know it from Republican cries of class warfare swirling around Mr. Obama’s new budget, which reiterates his calls for higher taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and households earning more than $250,000. Conventional understanding of election-season populism assumes that the president will be looking to stick it to die-hard Republicans.

snip

To make the point that he is not lashing out at opponents, Mr. Obama often notes that his proposals would raise his own taxes or those of allies like Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor. But the Democratic Party’s increasing electoral success in upper portions of the income scale points to something broader: an argument that people like him have a civic responsibility to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction and to pay for government spending priorities.

“It is the opposite of a pander,” said Dante Chinni, the director of Patchwork Nation. And it carries risks as well as potential rewards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/us/politics/obamas-tax-policy-targets-slice-of-his-base-the-affluent.html?ref=politics