The Party of Disagreeing With Ideas They’ve Always Disagreed With
Shorter Ross Douthat: It’s truly inexplicable that many Democrats oppose a deficit “compromise” made between a conservative nominal Democrat and a conservative Republican that includes such longstanding liberal preferences as ending the EITC and slashing the top marginal tax rate to levels not seen since the Hoover administration, and requires ongoing future cooperation from Republicans who have consistently demonstrated that any deficit reductions will be used to (partially) finance more upper-class tax cuts whenever they’re in power. Obviously, it’s because they have no interest in governing.
…additional shorter Ross Douthat: the fact that liberals oppose an entirely arbitrary revenue (and hence, if this is actually supposed to be a deficit proposal, spending) cap that would drastically shrink government going forward proves that liberals support all government spending.