George Rebane

Douglas Schoen was President Clinton’s pollster and continues his astute observations of America’s body politic.  Today he writes a piece advising fellow Democrats on some major policy shifts to get them through 2010.  Among his pearls –

– Democrats “need pro-growth, fiscally conservative policies.”
– The tea party movement “is not a Republican movement, and anyone who sees it as such is making a mistake.”  Instead it is a “move away from liberal, big-spending and big-taxing policies.”
– New Democrat policies should “include a broad-based payroll tax holiday”, and “an extension of the Bush tax cuts.”  Additionally we need “to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs” and provide “tax incentives for small businesses”.
– Obama should “become the ‘jobs president’ rather than the ‘healthcare president’.”
– On healthcare “Mr Obama must go back to square one.”
– Those people “who support the tea party will only come back to Democrats if it demonstrates that it understands (the) voters’ desire to return to the kind of limited government the movement endorses.”

Amazing as these insights are, Schoen still hews to his true colors when he backtracks to a “willingness to consider a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for another year until growth is stimulated” (emphasis mine).  If tax cuts stimulate economies, and history shows government revenues increase in good economies with lower taxes, then why start squelching a good thing again by raising taxes?  Does that not start another socialistic cycle of tax and spend?

But I guess that systemic blind spot is part and parcel of every dyed-in-the-wool progressive.  My advice to Democrats is to not listen to this guy and keep on following the winning trifecta of Obama-Reid-Pelosi that you fought so hard to send to Washington.