Tax and Spend Republicans

As the Carpetbagger notes, the tax plan floated by Bush's reform commission isn't getting half the fire from Democrats that it's getting from Republicans. It's like a level of Contra over there. And not one of those early, wimpy levels, we're talking scattershots and screen slowdown and epileptic seizures from all the tiny balls of death darting across the screen.

Ahem.

We've yet to see what the official document says, and we've no idea what Bush's ultimate recommendations will be, but assuming the President remains in the neighborhood of his commission's report, we're looking at a crack-up that splits right down the center of the conservative coalition. Taxes are the lifeblood of modern conservatism, this is Howard Jarvis stuff. You can't have apostasy there. And post-Miers, if Bush tries, the disappointment and head-shaking sadness we're seeing from Kristol and Frum will give way to a primal scream and war paint from the more, uh, energetic members of the conservative coalition.

Mystery Pollster, today, argued that Bush's numbers really can't fall further till his base deserts him. On Miers, that wasn't happening. But Miers is an elite issue, a disappointment in the upper echelons of the Republican punditocracy -- the base has remained fairly trusting on her. But if the President tells them he's about to take their health and home deductions and the antitax coalition tells them they're getting screwed, that'll change real quick.

Generally, when you need your base, you pander to them. Whether it's incidental or intentional, Bush seems to have gone in the other direction. That's making for better policy, to be sure, but it's putting the Republican coalition in real danger. It's like having my cake and eating it too.