Republicans shift away from tax cutting mania

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Politico:

Something is missing from this year’s midterm elections.

 

Republicans are talking about ISIL and President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act and Harry Reid. But what they aren’t talking about?

 

Slashing tax rates.

 

Though tax cuts have been a mainstay of their campaigns since at least Ronald Reagan, though the top marginal tax rate is now the highest since the 1980s, though the party could win control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in almost a decade, Republicans are barely mentioning reducing tax rates with voters.

 

“In a campaign, you talk about what people are interested in,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “I keep notes on all my town meetings” and “tax cuts haven’t come up.”

 

It’s a turnabout for a party sometimes mocked as maniacally focused on tax cuts, and a big switch from the last time voters went to the polls, when lawmakers clashed over the fate of trillions in Bush-era tax cuts. It also amounts to a little-noticed boon this election season to Democrats, who’ve long been pummeled over whether the public deserved tax “relief.”

 

A bigger question is whether it also signals a change within the Republican Party.

 

Some lawmakers — including ones no one would confuse for moderates — said they’re less interested in tax cuts than tax reform, a subtle distinction that has major political and policy implications.

________

 

Why not have both?