Both apparently love Bob Dole.
Elizabeth’s affection for her husband is understandable, but the former Clinton epigone Begala might shock many Newsweek readers with a new column titled “I Miss Bob Dole.”
Read the column, though, and you’ll understand why Rush Limbaugh’s favorite forehead yearns for the days of a Republican Party led by those who value deals more than they deal with values.
One other piece of Begala’s commentary struck me as particularly notable:
The Republicans are much more, shall we say, ideologically inspired—with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in constant, furious competition to prove who’s more devoted to the Tea Party’s extremist position that the federal government must never, under any circumstances, increase federal revenue by so much as a penny, no matter how catastrophic the consequences.
Begala makes a common error when he asserts that Tea Party extremists — one suspects he also would call the same people conservatives — don’t believe federal revenue should increase “by so much as a penny.” John Hood discussed revenue increases he can support in this column posted just 10 days ago.
The limited-government perspective commonly holds that government revenue should increase as a byproduct of economic growth, not through higher tax rates. In other words, as the economy grows, low marginal tax rates applied as equitably as possible will generate more revenue. That’s a fact of basic multiplication.
A second tenet of the limited-government perspective is that increased revenue should be used only for those programs and services government should provide. If those low marginal tax rates spark so much economic growth that revenue comes into the federal coffers hand over fist, the money that’s not needed for core government services or adequate emergency reserves should be returned to the taxpayers.
