On Democrats and Taxes

Thomas Sowell has a nifty column summarizing the Kerry campaign strategy.:

Senator Kerry has been busy posing for the media shooting guns, playing hockey, declaring himself as having "conservative" values, and even saying that life begins at conception.

[I am going to head in a different direction, but follow Sowell's link for the conclusion to his thoughts]

As a Virginian, I am reminded strongly of Democrat Mark Warner's recent campaign for governor, in which his most prominent promise was "I am a fiscal conservative."

Upon reaching office, Governor Warner immediately started looking for ways to raise.taxes. Blocked by a conservative legislature, Warner tried to get voters in the largely liberal regions of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to vote in regional tax increases. That thwarted, Warner claimed poverty and hardship and, with the ultimate endorsement of the congress, pushed forward a large state-wide tax increase. Today, the rebounding economy has created a surplus before the tax increases have been implimented.

The moral of the story is this: Democrats have realized that they can only rise to power by presenting themselves as "conservative." Using the Warner model from Virginia, Kerry is running to the center-right as a gun-toting, Catholic believing, centrist, his voting history be damned.

If Mark Warner, whom I consider to be far to the right of John Kerry, was able to push through large tax increases in rabidly anti-tax Virginia, there is no telling the kind of damage John Kerry could do to our tax code if put in charge of the federal executive branch.