Mark Schmitt says the Republican majority intends to underplay its hand rather than take responsibility for governing.
There’s a malady that Washington liberals and media types are particularly susceptible to. I’ve got a chronic recurring case of it myself. Call it policy literalism — the persistent belief that policy should have a rational, direct relationship to politics.
Here’s a test: Does it come as a surprise to you that most voters think their taxes went up in the last two years? Obama cut taxes by $240 billion, and nearly every household got a tax cut in the 2009 economic stimulus, but a pre-election poll for Bloomberg found that 52 percent of likely voters thought middle-class taxes had gone up, and only 19 percent thought they were lower.