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RE :” Democrats say they'll let all the Bush-era tax cuts expire if they can't raise taxes on the rich. Apparently, economic catastrophe is a reasonable price to pay for class warfare politics.
On Monday, Sen. Patty Murray, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that “unless Republicans end their commitment to protecting the rich above all else, our country is going to have to face the consequences of Republican intransigence.”
What she really means is Democratic intransigence.
After all, Republicans have taken the perfectly reasonable position that the last thing you want to do when the economy is barely breathing is raise taxes.
Obama himself once made that argument, at a time when the economy was doing better than it is today. And a few level-headed Senate Democrats agree.
Yet now, faced with a tough re-election and desperate to score political points, Obama says he'll veto any bill that extends all the Bush tax cuts, and Democrats, as evidenced by Murray's comments, are falling in line.”

Right now this has less to do with what happens the end of the year and everything to do with the November election and courting voters. And that election will determine to some-degree tax policy as Obama WILL veto tax cut extensions this time around, and blame Republicans.

The flip side is that now that Dems got super-mega-rich Romney to beat up for being out of touch with ordinary Americans, they now want to bait Republicans into as they phrase it :”Opposing tax cuts for the middle class and supporting tax cuts for mega-rich outsourcers like Romney”. It fits the script.

You got to wonder what that last RINO congress in 2010 achieved for us by temporarily extending those cuts through Obama’s election. The last thing Obama wanted was any taxes to go up back in late 2010, but those Republicans by ‘winning’ that extension (to the upper earners) saved him and gave him an election year issue to go with too, perfect with Romney as an opponent. Worse yet to get that deal they cut FICA and put SS recipients on the public dept gravy train, now Republicans don't know how to undo that and just caved on that once again.

I think the best option would have been if Democrats alone raised taxes on the rich when they had the house, but there is no way Dems could get their own votes in the Senate even though they only needed 50+Biden in the Senate.

The next best option would have been if the NE RINOs who betrayed us on DADT in late 2010 at the same time went along with Democrats in the Senate and just extended the middle class tax cuts and let the upper ones expire. If that happened the debate over taxes would completely different now. We now would be talking about how Obama's tax increases is what's killing the economy, instead Dems are saying the tax cuts are not working (this argument is easily pulled apart but Republicans dont appear smart enough to do it.)

Yes Rush, you sometimes win by losing. Obama was helped by (looking like) he lost that one vote in late 2010 when it was really a win for him. I am not optimistic.