by George Dienhart

One of these have been published every two years, like clockwork. Every election cycle, someone in the mainstream media publishes a obituary for the GOP. Much to liberals consternation, the GOP still exists.

The latest piece was published in Slate. What insight! Well, not really- it is a bold move to write this column for the 15th or so time. I'm sure the author (Timothy Noah) assured his editor that "things are different now". Noah contends that the failed bailout plan "caused an immediate financial catastrophe: The stock market fell an unprecedented 777.68 points" He goes on stating that "$1.2 trillion in wealth" was wiped out. Only problem is that the Dow regained 61% of it's loses, the next day. After this "disaster" of a week, the Dow was only down about 300 points. Not a good week, but hardly a collapse. A 300 point drop in the Dow, will not kill the GOP... No matter how Mr. Noah spins it.

Noah's wishful thinking went past the markets. His "evidence" included the greatest secret, and worse sin, of all- Republicans like smaller government.

He also went on to describe the "central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan". Con? Not by the GOP, but Noah perpetuated a con of his own when he stated "the distribution of this government largesse greatly favored the rich." Here is the real great con. Noah states that "when tax breaks were added to the tally, households with incomes above $100,000 received considerably more ($9,280) than households with incomes below $10,000 ($5,690)" Notice that first part of the sentence- when tax breaks were added to the tally? Mr. Noah is carefully perpetuating another liberal myth here- that your money is the governments. Noah has taken two sets of numbers and melded them together to make his otherwise incoherent point. He is comparing the cost of government services to the benefit of tax breaks. He has included welfare and social security as costs. Remember- though capped, someone that makes 80k a year pays more Social Security than someone making 20k a year. There is going to be a minor disparity in his number just because those on the high end of his figures (100k+) are paying more in Social Security. When you add in the tax breaks the chasm seemingly grows larger. The problem with this is, a tax break is not a government service. For this reason, Noah's numbers are completely wrong. He's comparing apples to oranges...

He continues to spread DNC propaganda by saying of the Bush era tax cuts "That the tax cuts favored the wealthy didn't seem to matter". Again, a lie. In truth the tax cuts helped everyone. Before the Bush tax cuts, the bottom rung of the taxpayer ladder paid .5% of the total taxes taken in by the federal government. After the Bush tax cuts, they paid .3% In fact, according to taxfoundation.org, the share of tax liability that was paid by the top 6% of earners, actually went up. The graph below (from taxpayers.org) clearly explains the benefits of the Bush era tax cuts. As you can see- the share of tax liability for those making over 131k went up under Bush. Every other group was paying less. This was hardly a tax cut for the rich...

Noah goes on, spewing more and more inaccuracies. He states that the defeat of the first bailout bill was "a dose of free-market principles that sent the Dow into the crapper." gain- a 200 point net for the week is not "the crapper". I would argue that once Wall Street woke up and realized it's capitalist heart was still beating, the Dow gained almost 500 points- because the bailout bill failed. In the end, Mr. Noah admits to authoring 3 columns pronouncing the Republicans dead. After analyzing his most recent, it's not hard to see why he is so consistently wrong...