Posted by
voice_of_reason on Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:01:55 PM
We've all seen TV interviewers of the Leftist persuasion ask Conservatives the following question, usually with an accompanying supercilious "gotcha" grin:
"How can you be a Deficit Hawk ...AND... in favor of Tax cuts?"
They ask this question to make Conservatives seem inconsistent. After all, how can a Deficit Hawk oppose an increase in Taxes that might help keep the deficit from growing in size?
If the Conservative responds by talking about "Cutting Govt Spending", the interviewer can just rolls his/her eyes and ask, with an all-knowing smirk:
A) "how many teachers/policemen/firefighters would you like to fire?", the implication being that all Govt workers are either wonderful teachers, or indispensable to maintaining basic services.
-OR-
B) "Name one specific change that you would make to Entitlements?", daring the Conservative to "touch the third rail". Incidentally, isn't it about time that we make "Increasing Govt Spending" the third rail?
If Republicans were Conservatives, they would make the argument about the immorality of equating Tax Cuts with Govt Spending. Effectively, this is a crazy notion that establishes a moral equivalence between "allowing" an individual to keep his hard-earned money AND the Govt's desire to spend money that it doesn't have!
Unfortunately, the above argument takes more than 30seconds to make - and the made-for-TV host can snirk (sneer + smirk) condescendingly at the unsophisticated Conservative for his/her Luddite views.
Conservatives may try to say "lower taxes will grow the economy, increasing tax revenues in the process", only to be labeled as "voodoo economists", or to have a video clip shown with an economist stating that "nah, it wouldn't make a dent in the deficit ..."
Here's how Conservatives should respond ... with an analogy:
Imagine that you have been financially supporting a relative, who has no skills to earn a living. Now, imagine that the relative chooses to buy a fancy new house, with money borrowed from China. How would you feel if your relative demands that you increase your annual "contribution" to him, due to the huge loan that he has taken on.
For extra credit, a Conservative may want to replace "buy a fancy new house" in the above analogy with "invest in renewable energy". Ignore, for the moment, the merits of renewable energy. The fact is that the unskilled relative will squander the borrowed money ... because he is, after all, unskilled.