It's the Strategy, Stupid

Conservatives like to get our knickers in a twist every time our Republican heroes get out maneuvered by their wily Democratic foes.  And in the payroll tax flap they seem to have got their heads well and truly handed to them. Why, they thought that the Social Security Trust Fund was supposed to be a sacred trust!  That's what the Democrats have been telling us for the best part of a century.

But think what the Democrats are telling us with their payroll tax holiday:

1. Trust fund, schmust fund.
2. What matters is President Obama's reelection.
3. High taxes do too matter to the economy.
4. They are stuck with a stupid payroll tax reduction because they have shut off the real solution, lowering marginal income tax rates.  Millionaires and billionaires, old chap.

Let's step back a moment and look at the lay of the land.  The bigger picture is that, for the last ten to twenty years, Democrats have been on the back foot.  They had to run Bill Clinton as a centrist and had to concede welfare reform.  They had to run a non-stop campaign of character assassination against President Bush to keep their base energized.  And now, on defense and foreign policy they have basically endorsed the Bush doctrine.  Only they lack the intestinal fortitude to do it.

On economic policy they are having to lie to themselves that it was greedy bankers that caused the Crash of 2008 and not government credit policy and housing subsidies.  They totally muffed the recession by passing all their big government agenda before the economy got a head of steam.  And anyway, their Keynesian policy stuff is rubbish.  It was rubbish in the 1930s, and it is even more rubbish today because the government is up to its ears in debt and can't really mortgage the nation to "stimulate" it.

What the Obamis are demonstrating in living color, for those of us with eyes to see, is that the weight of government really matters, most especially when the economy is weighed down with underwater mortgages and unknown future costs associated with ObamaCare.  And it doesn't help that the Dems are keeping various sacred cows alive on crony capitalist life support.

Look at the big picture.  It tells you that the Dems are toast.  Because they are running out of other peoples' money.  All the sound and fury is telling us something.  Macbeth knew, in the moment before a messenger reported to him that Birnam Wood was on the move:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So it is, when the roof is about to fall in.

The American people don't know nuttin' about economic policy.  But they do know when things aren't working.  And when they feel that things aren't working they reckon it is time for a change.  Like right now.