You're right about Bush making taxes central to the campaign, and if this is just his opening shot I tihnk he's blown a hole in the side of the Scaramouche.* Kerry rolled out what he thought was the big gun in the dem playbook--Raise Taxes on the Rich--and Bush pulled a Road Runner v. Coyote on him, using a commonly-known truism every man or woman around a water cooler knows to be the case.
Kerry just made himself look like a promise-them-everything pol. Whatever one's feelings about Bush, everyone who hears him say that will say "Well, THAT's true."
Will it convert anyone? Nope. It isn't meant to--it's meant to set up a conversation, so to speak. W will build on this, while Kerry is stuck in his corner. Dems accuse Bush of using tax cuts as his only economic policy, but he just showed that Kerry's only policy--tax raises--are a scam that leaves the middle class holding the bill.
He's just set up the base for showing how tax cuts for ALL are the way to go.
*The name of John K's yacht. ;)
Water cooler truism bump.
Corporations do not pay taxes, buyers of the product do. Taxes are built into the cost of production. For crying out loud, if corporations were required to eat the ever increasing tax bite without passing along the increase to the purchaser, they would all be declaring chapter something or other.
Son of a gun! Scaramouche the name of his yacht! Clearly, Kerry's hubris knows no bounds. And frankly, the people I argue with at work who will whine that GW lied about WMD's and nitpick about which country we should have invaded first, are the first to scream bloody murder about taxes. They'll hold their noses and vote for GW.