Groupthink
How caught in the clutches of extremism is the Republican Party?
At the GOP presidential debate in Iowa, all eight candidates said they are so dead set against tax increases that they would even reject a deficit-reduction deal that wildly and overwhelmingly favors spending cuts — $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases.
This would be the deal of a lifetime for a deficit hawk, an unimaginable opportunity to shrink the size of government, but the Republican candidates shot that hawk right out of the sky.
Even the debate’s Fox News moderator, Bret Baier, seemed to marvel at this one. He asked the candidates to raise their hands if they really meant it.
All eight raised their hands.
Let’s just hope that the six Republicans appointed to the congressional “supercommittee,” which must come up with a bipartisan deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving, show even a smidgen more common sense. Or this country is going nowhere.
The shame of it is that we doubt the candidates, in their mindless moment of group-think, reflected the majority view of their own party. Most Republicans, according to polls, are open to tax increases as part of a plan to cut the deficit. And, we would bet, they know a fantastic deal when they see it.
Had one of the candidates responded by saying, “Heck, I hate taxes, but you bet I’d take that deal,” we suspect he or she would have become the instant front-runner for the GOP nomination. As it is, the anti-tax extremists remain the tail that wags the dog.
Chicago Sun-Times