Read His Lips

Where, oh where have we heard this before?

Republican John McCain says there will be no new taxes during his administration if he is elected president.

"No new taxes," the likely GOP presidential nominee said during a taped interview broadcast Sunday.

McCain told ABC's This Week that under no circumstances would he increase taxes, and added that he could "see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates, and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates," as well as giving people the ability to write off depreciation and eliminating the alternative minimum tax.

Does this really require any elaboration?  "No new taxes" is what every RINO presidential candidate in the post-Reagan age apparently feels compelled to say to "calm down" skeptical conservatives and batten down his/her right flank.  Then, if s/he makes it to the White House as something more than just a tourist, the promise gets forgotten in lieu of subsequent Beltway insider, behind-closed-doors, smoked-filled-room, tax-increasing budget-deal-making with his/her "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle.

Trust me, the crushingly Democrat Congress that emerges from this election cycle is going to jack tax rates through the stratosphere, either over the top of a President McCain or with his hearty approval and cooperation.  Which do you think he's really going to choose when that moment arrives?:

McCain's "no new taxes" statement marked a turnaround. Last September, he was forced to defend his refusal to sign a no-new tax pledge offered by the conservative Americans for Tax Reform.

"I stand on my record," he said during a televised debate in Durham, N.H. "I don't have to sign pledges."

Somehow the ill-tempered Dark Lord of the Sith captured the GOP nomination anyway.  But that simply dooms him to a catastrophic wipeout defeat in November unless he can somehow bamboozle the Right into buying the rank fiction that he's one of them, or at least will make concessions to them that he will honor once in office.  Concessions like "seeing the argument" for more tax cuts, which is really no concession at all, since "seeing the argument" is a far hue & cry from advocacy of same.

If there is such a thing as a Rightie with ADD, perhaps Darth Queeg can pull it off.  Otherwise the rest of us recognize Bush41 gimmick-infringement when we see it, and our wrists will remain crossed, and our backs turned, even as his erstwhile Enemy Media buddies start sharpening their d'k tahgs for the bloodletting to come.