Bush: "They'll raise your taxes"

Bush turned to a familiar 2004 campaign theme Thursday: Democrats will raise taxes.  The response is that Democrats will do whatever it takes to turn this country in the right direction again.

[George W. Bush]

"If they get control of the House of Representatives, they'll raise your taxes. It'll hurt our economy. And that's why we're not going to let them get control of the House of Representatives," Bush said

This simple but effective strategy was basically the death knell for John Kerry.  Democrats simply did not do enough to convince the middle class that they would keep the Republican tax cuts and could not distance themselves from the old familiar "tax and spend" label.

Why?  Because Democrats were unable to acknowledge that (gulp) the tax cuts were the correct move for a stimulus.

What Democrats should have said is something like this:

"Okay folks, you did it!  We put the ball in your hands and you made it happen.  Middle class, I'm talking to you now, I am telling you right here and now we are gonna keep the ball in your hands. But it's also time for the goverment to do its job, that's right, we have to start thinking in a fiscally responsible way...etc etc.."

But that didn't happen.  Acknowledging the success of the tax cuts is to acknowledge that the tax cuts were part of a stimulus.  Stimulus is the key word here, because it indicates a temporary boost, and that it is not something that is sustainable.  Part of eliminating the label of the "tax and spend"  Democrat is to change the way the public thinks of the economy.  Democrats have to present the economy as an expanding and contracting organism and not something static.  

The idea of a permanent tax cut is not only naive (because it suggests that the economy is static), but it is a kind economic fundamentalism that is completely indifferent to the ever changing financial indicators.  

So the answer to the familiar but effective "Democrats will raise your taxes", is 'Not necessarily, but, the Democrats will do whatever it takes to get the job done'.