I was sitting in KO’s restaurant today, watching news about the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision scroll across the TV screen when an Obama re-election commercial came on. The commercial, which had clearly been crafted without any thought to the Obamacare decision going the way it did, contained clips of Gov. Mitt Romney going after Obama’s economic failure and proposed tax hikes. Romney’s claims were then countered by a smirking Obama, who promised to continue investing in America while simultaneously protecting middle class families from any tax increases.
The hook in the commercial was, “Shame on Mitt Romney for distorting President Obama’s record.”
Of course, to lucid citizens the commercial is absolutely worthless right now. Because the healthcare legislation the Supreme Court upheld contains 21 different tax increases, and many of them will fall on middle class families just as heavily as they will fall upon other families.
That’s right–21 different tax increases.
But for those of us who still view conservatism as “the politics of the possible,” these taxes provide Romney with a huge campaign issue. For no longer is he running against Obama’s failed economy and merely proposed, and therefore plausibly deniable, tax increases. Rather, he is running against a first-term president whose Supreme Court-approved healthcare overhaul contains the largest tax hikes in American history.
Obama can no longer deny that his healthcare overhaul places myriad new taxes on the American people, including middle class families. And Gov. Romney isn’t “distorting President Obama’s record” by pointing it out.
Game on.