Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Patty doubles down on dishonesty

If Patty Wetterling ends up in Washington, I sincerely hope she’ll take a deep look at what she did to get there. If she wins her contest against Michele Bachmann, her victory will come with the unmistakable patina of shame. I have been observing politics for a long time now and I’ve never seen a politician cling to a specific, demonstrable lie harder than Patty Wetterling. And that includes Bill Clinton.

The lie in this case is the claim that she has made about her opponent, Michele Bachmann. Wetterling claimed that Bachmann supports the imposition of a 23% national sales tax. Bachmann has never said that she would impose such a tax. The idea of a national sales tax is something that hasn’t gotten much past the theory stage, but in every version I’ve seen it would work like this. A 23% tax would indeed be imposed on most purchases, but (crucially) not food. The tax would replace the federal income tax entirely. And in most versions I’ve seen, each taxpayer would get a rebate check from Uncle Sam equal to 23% of the first $35,000 of income earned, or about $8,050. You will get serious debate whether it would work, but it would likely mean that most people would pay less taxes than they do now. And it would also mean that the cost of the federal government would be pretty easy to calculate. But at this point it’s an idea and I strongly suspect we’ll never see this implemented in our lifetimes. There are too many people who benefit from the current tax system and such people have a lot of power. Complexity is a boon to tax lawyers, accountants and IRS agents, to say nothing of those in government who prefer that the true cost of government be hidden in an incomprehensible thicket of laws and regulations.

Bachmann, like a lot of people who think about these things, would be interested in looking at whether or not such a taxing regime would work. But no one, including Bachmann, would ever impose such a tax in addition to the current tax structure. When Wetterling ran her first ad on this topic, she claimed that Bachmann wanted to impose a 23% sales tax immediately. That is a lie, because it not only misstates the truth, but it also a deliberate misstatement. Most commentators, including those who would prefer that Wetterling win, pointed out that the ad was, at minimum, misleading, but Wetterling has continued to run the ad despite nearly universal condemnation.

But now Wetterling has doubled down. She has started running a new ad, which repeats the same lie. Featuring the usual attack ad elements (spooky music, a picture of Bachmann that makes her look like a fugitive from Madame Tussaud’s), there’s the lie, repeated again. And she continues to beat the dead horse that is Mark Foley, even though she has been called out on national television about the dishonesty of another ad on that topic that stated that a half dozen representatives had covered up for Foley, none of which she could or would name. That is a tactic that I, as the son of a town that sent Joe McCarthy to Washington, can recognize.

Bachmann is hardly the ideal candidate. She is a Holy Roller type and her ambition is palpable. There's a faint whiff of the Stepford Wife in her. And as a Catholic, I have mild concern about her membership in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, whose members tend to be polite but virulently anti-Catholic. I would have strongly preferred that Phil Krinkie (a hard-nosed, notoriously green eyeshade Republican) or Jim Knoblach (a bright if vanilla Republican) had been the Republican candidate in the 6th CD. But Wetterling has run a disgraceful campaign and it would be a bad thing if the voters would reward her mendacity with a seat in Congress. Patty Wetterling has made enormous contributions to the public discussion as a child safety advocate, and she has faced the loss of her son Jacob with grace and dignity. But she’s throwing that legacy away right now. It is a sad, almost tragic spectacle.

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