Republicans have historically portrayed themselves as the party of lower taxes. It's fundamental conservative philosophy: Government should be as small as possible, and taxes should be as low as possible—not only, the theory goes, because it maximizes personal freedom, but also because people know how to spend money better than the government does. This is the worldview that predominated when the Republican nominee was under attack for refusing to disclose his tax returns amid suspicion that he was paying a lower rate on them than many who make a middle class salary. In this worldview, keeping your personal taxes as low as possible is not only "really American," in the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); but failure to exploit every single last loophole is a disqualification from higher office:



I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.

--Mitt Romney, interviewed by David Muir of ABC News, 7/29/12

In less than two months, however, the entire conservative narrative on the moral obligation of taxes has shifted. In July, paying as little in taxes as possible was as American as baseball, mom and apple pie. In September, however, paying no income taxes was the sign of shiftless delinquency, of a hopeless dependency on government that reflexively triggered unwavering support for the reelection of Barack Obama. How exactly did we get there from here in so short a time?

Part of it, of course, is the expediency generated by the need to defend the unrelenting dumpster fire that is the campaign of Mitt Romney in the hopes of winning an election that is slipping away. But in large part, it is due to the transition of the Republican Party from conservatism to the cult of objectivism, and the desperate need to gin up a war between the poor and the middle class.

In the face of the fact that the Republican Party's electoral fortunes are depending increasingly on white men, the same Sen. Graham declared in a moment of candor that they simply weren't generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term, given the ever-decreasing share that white men hold in the American electorate. The way conservatives go about generating this resentment is to try to blame the misfortunes of the struggling middle class on poor minorities who are allegedly skating by, sucking up welfare, and contributing nothing in return. This strategy not only takes advantage of existing racial resentments, but also distracts from the role that the 1 percent have had in vacuuming up the wealth of the nation at everyone else's expense.

But when trying to frame American society into the objectivist narrative of Ayn Rand and split our country into producers and parasites, the easiest natural distinction—especially given the progressive nature of American taxation—is to draw a bright dividing line between those who pay income taxes and those who do not, thus attempting to unite the rich and the middle class in outrage and resentment against the minority poor. But in the process, this objectivist narrative reframes taxation from something that one does one's absolute best to avoid into the hallmark of whether one is one of society's noble actors.

This short-term defense of Romney's grievous private views will cause serious long-term damage to conservative anti-tax orthodoxy. By reframing paying taxes as something that moral "producers" do, conservatives are inherently arguing that poor people should pay more taxes so as not to be parasites. Furthermore, the supply-side tax cuts for which they have long argued can no longer be seen as legitimate economic policy, but rather an abdication of responsibility to American society; a "going Galt."

But Republicans know that even this strategy won't be enough to defeat President Obama, and that given demographic destiny, they are going to have even more trouble winning elections in the future. That could be why conservative ideologues are sowing the seeds for just disenfranchising the poor altogether. After all: If you can't win their votes, just stop them from voting.