Continuing this horse ride, I can’t help but notice the continued foolishness of GOP officials of various stripes. Steve Benen on Maddowblog summarizes nicely:
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is signaling similar flexibility, saying on CNN Sunday that decisions about deductions remain up in the air as “the bill is not finished yet.” He took it a step further on Fox News Sunday, by adding that a tax plan that doesn’t add to the deficit won’t spur growth.
“I’ve been very candid about this. We need to have new deficits because of that. We need to have the growth,” Mulvaney said. “If we simply look at this as being deficit-neutral, you’re never going to get the type of tax reform and tax reductions that you need to get to sustain 3 percent economic growth.”
Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), summarizing the perspective of many in his party, recently said in reference to deficit reduction, “It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led. It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.”
He clearly wasn’t kidding.
And they aren’t thinking ahead, are they? The GOP vulnerability on the subject of their principles have suddenly become quite apparent and should be used by every single Democratic candidate as a baseball bat to suggest to the voters that perhaps those who they’ve been voting for are nothing more than cynical power seekers. Their excuse that they are changing their views in response to reality is invalidated by their own man Walker’s intemperate remark.
Indeed, the only unchanging principle of the GOP may be their certainty that they deserve power.
