What We Can Learn from Bernie Sanders’s Tax Return
But it’s quite ironic that the candidate who spends the most time arguing that the rich are under-taxed makes $205,000 per year and pays a lower tax rate than the average American. He is himself an example of precisely the phenomenon he decries every day on the campaign trail; he cuts himself slack he would never extend to any wealthy person he so vehemently demonizes.
.. If Democrats really believed their own rhetoric, there was no way they could possibly nominate the former board member of the legendarily anti-union Walmart, who made millions in speaking fees for speeches to big banks and financial firms, who “sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director” than a critic, according to attendees. Her net worth is four times what it takes to reach America’s one percent. You don’t usually find populist crusaders eager to dismantle an emerging plutocracy posing for pictures at Donald Trump’s wedding.
.. The reform camp has failed to achieve the fusionist consensus that Buckley and Meyer forged decades ago, which brought together the three main strands of conservative thought — economic, social and foreign policy — under one anti-communist umbrella.
.. A lot of Trump’s offerings — vehement opposition to illegal immigration and free trade, a somewhat isolationist foreign policy, more than a little “blood and soil” nationalism — was offered by Pat Buchanan in past decades; you notice there was no clear Buchanan heir in Republican politics until now. Among GOP lawmakers, there’s pretty broad support for border security and some deportations, but there were only a handful of trade skeptics and another handful of isolationists — certainly few Republican lawmakers are dismissing NATO as obsolete or calling for arming South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons as Trump has done.
.. Most of his biggest-name endorsees are those who departed elected office and aren’t likely to return: Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Ben Carson. Or you could argue the Trump movement’s middle isn’t policymakers, it’s pundits: Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Andrea Tantaros, Eric Bolling, and arguably Rush Limbaugh.