Brendan Nyhan

The politically convenient but intellectually unsupportable claim that tax cuts increase revenue will not go away. Today, Steve Forbes follows President Bush’s example in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

How would a flat tax do this? What so many “experts” can’t grasp is that taxes are not only a means of raising revenue for governments but also a price and a burden. The tax you pay on income is the price you pay for working; the tax on profits is the price you pay for being successful, and the levy on capital gains is the price you pay for taking risks that work out. When you lower the price of good things, such as productive work, success and risktaking, you get more of them. The flat tax does that dramatically.

Experience demonstrates time and time again — the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts of the 1920s, the Kennedy cuts of the ’60s, the Reagan cuts of the ’80s and the Bush reductions of 2003 — that lower tax rates lead to more economic activity, which leads to more government revenue.

(If you’re interested, Michael Kinsley annihilates takes some satisfying potshots at Forbes’ plan in the Washington Post.)

The New York Times reports on the division over spending among conservatives, who are in the process of eating their young in Colorado and elsewhere for not cutting spending enough. The solution they’re proposing? Constitutional limits at the state level:

Conservative frustration with government growth increased with President Bush’s first term, which added more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Conservatives once talked of electing their own; they now talk of electing their own and tying their hands.

Stop us before we spend again? “Yes, that’s really it,” said Mr. [Dick] Armey, who argues that the pressures to spend, reinforced by lobbyists and contributors, can overwhelm even the firmest conservatives.

In Ohio, the secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative this fall. A Republican running for governor next year, Mr. Blackwell readily concedes that the increased spending over the past decade has come with Republicans controlling both the legislature and governor’s mansion.

“The G.O.P. has given the state the two largest tax increases in state history,” he said. “You need fiscal architecture in the Constitution that establishes guardrails.”

Armey blames the problem on lobbyists and contributors, but who’s missing from that list? Voters! Republicans refuse to consider the possibility that voters sometimes really do want more spending on education, health care, police, prisons, roads, etc. (There must be a reason that Republicans keep saying they’re going to cut government and then failing to do it.) And if voters do want more spending, shouldn’t they get it? After all, we live in a democracy. It’s one thing to put a balanced budget requirement in a state constitution, where it is harder to amend, but why should the level of government spending be put outside the realm of year-to-year democratic choice? I’m sorry that Republican politicians have such a hard time following the dictates of Grover Norquist, but that doesn’t make constitutional spending limits good public policy.

Is the Bush administration rejoining the reality-based community?

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

“What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”

“Never realistic”? “Unreality”? Who are these people, and what did they do with our government?

From a New York Times story on the deluxe accomodations in some military bases in Iraq:

“We had no idea conditions were going to be this great!” said Lieutenant Deaton, 25, the public affairs officer of the 256th Brigade Combat Team and an ambassador of the exclamation mark. “My first thought was, oh my God! This is good!”

The phrase “ambassador of the exclamation mark” is a great little commentary on Deaton’s email punctuation style and the happy-happy mantras of the military PR flack. Love it.

One more comment on the NARAL ad against John Roberts that was pulled down this week.

To me, this seems like a classic example of a pathology of the political ad business — the desire to use paid advertisements to generate media attention. Consultants intentionally overstate their case in ads so that they will create controversy, figuring that drawing more attention to the ad will ultimately hurt the other side more than their own. But it’s strategically stupid, in my opinion, because you run the risk of going too far and damaging your credibility and that of your allies, as NARAL has done.

I learned this the hard way in 2000 when I was working for Ed Bernstein in the Nevada Senate race. A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad criticizing our opponent, John Ensign, needlessly overstated his position on abortion, and Republicans pushed back, labeling Bernstein as a liar, which led to a death spiral for our campaign in the polls. You can see a truth watch segment on the DSCC ad that was aired by a Las Vegas TV station here.

Here’s a justifiably scathing piece from the AP over the GOP’s payment of James Tobin’s legal bills even as it denounces voter fraud and suppression:

The Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters even as it pays the legal bills for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to thwart Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

The Republican National Committee already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly.

…”The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters … of their federally secured right to vote,” states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.

The Republican Party has repeatedly and pointedly disavowed any tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in 2000 that tipped the presidential race to Bush.

The New York Times makes a classic error, portraying the correlation between eating together as a family and various positive outcomes as a causal relationship:

The family dinner table, meanwhile, has mostly managed to retain something of a sanctified aura – the last meeting ground left in a world of working parents, relentless afterschool activities and an array of solitary technological amusements.

Science backs tradition: numerous research studies have shown that eating together as a family does everything from raise test scores to reduce the risk of behavioral problems, drug addiction and depression. One recent University of Michigan study found the communal dinner had more influence on a child’s development than church-going or studying.

It’s more likely, of course, that eating together is a proxy for various unmeasured characteristics of the family — unless someone wants to claim that the meal itself is driving all of those factors? I doubt it.

Ever since the march toward war in Iraq began, 9/11 has always been the administration’s hole card. They pull it out every time they get in trouble. It makes sense politically given that Bush’s approval rating was boosted to ridiculous levels by 9/11, and has been rapidly declining ever since. But it’s offensive given that that there is no evidence of any link between Iraq and 9/11.

That’s why I’m not surprised to see that the administration, with its low approval ratings and unpopular war, is going to make a big deal about 9/11 on the fourth anniversary of the attacks:

The Pentagon will hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an unusual announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing yesterday.

“This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk,” Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of “the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation.”

…Word of the event startled some observers. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said John Pike, who has been a defense analyst in Washington for 25 years and runs GlobalSecurity.org.

The news also reignited debate and anger over linking Sept. 11 with the war in Iraq.

“That piece of it is disturbing since we all know now there was no connection,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran who heads Operation Truth, an anti-administration military booster.

Rieckhoff suggested the event was an ill-conceived publicity stunt. “I think it’s clear that their public opinion polls are in the toilet,” he said.

Rumsfeld’s walk had some relatives of 9/11 victims fuming.

“How about telling Mr. Rumsfeld to leave the memories of Sept. 11 victims to the families?” said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband in the attacks.

What will the Bush administration do when 9/11 stops bailing them out? For better or worse, the public is turning against this administration and the war in Iraq, and a “Freedom Walk” isn’t going to change that.

According to the Associated Press, NARAL is withdrawing its misleading and controversial ad attacking John Roberts — hallelujah:

After a week of protests by conservatives, an abortion-rights group said Thursday night it is withdrawing a television advertisement linking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to violent anti-abortion activists.

“We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts’ record,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,” she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had urged the group to withdraw the ad.

The conservative attack machine is starting to turn up the heat against Cindy Sheehan, the mother who has turned her son’s death in Iraq into a crusade against the war. They know that her vigil outside President Bush’s Texas ranch could become a potent anti-war symbol if she isn’t smeared into submission first.

Enter (surprise!) Matt Drudge, who posted an article claiming Sheehan had “dramatically changed her account” about a private meeting with Bush in 2004. But as Media Matters and Salon’s Eric Boehlert have pointed out, Drudge was quoting the original article out of context; Sheehan had actually told the reporter that she opposed the war, but had decided not to express those feelings to Bush at the time. Nonetheless, the claim bounced around right-wing blogs before being picked up on two different Fox News shows.

Now, conservative pundits are trying to silence Sheehan with anti-democratic accusations that she is betraying her country. Here’s Bill O’Reilly:

I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [publicity] and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

A writer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went even further, publishing a shameful op-ed devoted entirely to smearing Sheehan as a traitor:

The insurgents were Casey’s enemy. The president of the United States is his mother’s. What is wrong with this picture? Would he be proud of her near-treasonous actions? Hardly.

This woman is a representative example of typical, illogical anti-war activists. She thinks Bush, not the terrorists, killed her son. She supports those who killed Casey by wanting to pull out and let them kill more innocent people, unhindered. The lady is on the wrong team. She’s disgraceful.

If Sheehan wants to continue to make a fool out of herself, I suppose that is her business as a free American. Her son and our brave troops have given her even the right to orderly protest against the very actions providing the freedom that allows her to speak out.

My suggestion to her, however, is that she think about the lives of those still in Iraq. Undermining public support for our efforts in Iraq helps the enemy, her son’s murderers. They love people like her, but hate those like her heroic son.

I will repeat the point I made about the NARAL ad attacking John Roberts: Criticizing the war in Iraq doesn’t mean you support the insurgents, and filing a brief in a court case doesn’t mean you endorse the defendant’s actions. In a democracy governed by laws, people have a right to speak their mind freely, and an obligation to speak up for the correct application of the law to even the most loathsome criminal. We must not lose sight of those principles.

Update 8/12: I can’t resist linking to this item on Michelle Malkin’s hypocrisy in purporting to speak for Sheehan’s dead son.

Update 8/26: It’s worth noting that the New York Times corrected a story saying Bill O’Reilly called Sheehan treasonous. He did not say so directly. But he did suggest as much in the quote presented above — O’Reilly’s statement that Sheehan “bears… responsibility” for the perception of her actions as treasonous implies that he endorses such a view.