#Winning.
It's hardly a coincidence: when the country's economic indicators started showing signs of strength and resurgence, the current crop of second-tier wannabes posing as frontrunners for the Republican nomination stopped focusing so much on the economy and started to reemphasize their hard-right
bona fides on social issues, as if to prove to the increasingly marginalized Republican electorate that each of them in turn was sufficiently misogynistic as to be worthy of their votes. The raw vote totals for the Republican primary and caucus contests so far have indicated an ominous sense of apathy among the conservative base, which is being forced to choose between a thoroughly uninspiring frontrunner like Mitt Romney, or alternatives like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich—candidates who in any other cycle would be considered second-tier at best. Perhaps this new-found hysteria over birth control is a way to fire up and re-energize the social conservative activist base for this cycle, or perhaps it is a
concession that will hurt in the short term, but clarify the dividing line in future cycles between overbearing liberals and god-fearing conservatives.
Either way, the massive pushback against the war on women that is currently being waged by Republicans at both the state and federal level, as well as the bleeding of support that pushback has engendered, will lead Republican strategists to do an about-face and attack President Obama on the economy the moment it takes a turn for the worse. And naturally—because these are Republicans we're talking about, after all—these attacks will center on the unfair tax burden placed on businesses. On how our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. On how the complexity of our tax code is an inhibitor to entrepreneurs and innovators. In other words, the usual conservative line of attack. But the difference is: when Republicans finally decide that the economy is more important than misogyny, President Obama will be ready and waiting for them.
While Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were debating whether the pill causes immorality or whether immorality causes the pill, President Obama was busy proposing a tax plan that will completely outflank the Republican contenders. The President's plan would lower overall corporate tax rates, give a preferential rate to domestic manufacturers, assess a mandatory minimum tax on overseas earnings, and simplify the tax code by eliminating loopholes. And while some progressives have legitimate concerns about the President's proposal, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, and will allow the President to strike back hard at anticipated Republican attacks throughout the rest of the campaign cycle.
It is certainly true that calls from a Democratic president to lower the corporate tax rate could convey the idea that lowering corporate taxes are a consensus solution for an ailing economy, further reinforcing the ascendancy of supply-side ideology over more progressive economic perspectives. But while that concern is understandable, it is misguided in this case. It is a fact that the United States does have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world; small business who don't have an army of lobbyists to carve out special exemptions in the tax code just for them struggle with exactly this situation every 15th of March, when corporate tax filings come due for the previous calendar year. Cutting the corporate tax rate overall, while eliminating loopholes and imposing a minimum tax for overseas profits, will, if enacted, achieve the much-needed effect of shifting the tax burden away from small businesses and back onto the huge multinational corporations who somehow manage to pay no taxes or even get money back from the government every year.
But while the overall policy is sound, the politics of this move are even better. There is no way that a Republican majority in the House of Representatives would ever pass a plan that closed corporate tax loopholes or instituted a minimum tax on overseas profits: the corporations and CEOs who seem to dictate the moves of Republican politicians, as well as the the army of lobbyists who interface with them, would simply never let it happen. But merely proposing the idea not only inoculates President Obama against the unavoidable attacks by the eventual Republican nominee, but actually allows him to flip the script. When Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum talk about the burdensome corporate tax rate, Mr. Obama can simply say that he proposed fixing it, but that the Republican Party was too fixated on protecting special interest loopholes and companies that outsource jobs, preventing them from doing the right thing for American small businesses and manufacturers.
When the Republican contenders are done working as hard as they can to alienate women and independents and refocus on small business owners, they just might find that President Obama has taken one of their signature issues off the table. And they would deserve nothing less.