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Alabamans protect the GOP brand.(Politico)
On September 9, Alabama voters decided by 68 percent to 32 percent against a constitutional amendment that would have raised state taxes by $1.2 billion each and every year. In so doing, they highlighted two trends in the Republican Party.
The first trend is the transformation of the GOP into the anti-tax party. Younger Americans and those educated in public high schools might not be aware that the GOP was the party of high tariffs--then the largest source of national tax revenue--in the period following the Civil War. It was the Southern Democrats who were the low-tariff, low-tax party.
As late as 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater voted against President Kennedy's 25 percent across-the-board reduction in income tax rates. This began to change with the Republican Party's adoption of the Kemp-Roth 33 percent marginal tax rate reduction in the 1978 Congressional campaigns, and with Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign. Reagan, too, allowed a series of small tax hikes, even as he dropped the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 28 percent.
The Republicans became the no-tax-hike party after President George Bush ran on the pledge, broke his pledge, and was defeated in 1992. Since then, the party has formally adhered to the anti-tax-hike pledge as policy, and no Republican member of the House or Senate has voted to raise taxes. But at the state level, Republican governors have fallen into two camps: those who might one day run for national office and refuse to raise taxes, and governors with no future ambitions who don't mind a tax hike or two. The no-tax-hike governors include Rick Perry of Texas, Jeb Bush of Florida, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Craig Benson of New Hampshire, and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
Alabama's Republican governor Bob Riley was not part of that group, and he decided to test the theory that voters would support tax hikes: 1) in times of economic downturn, 2) to pay for education spending, 3) to make the tax system more progressive, and 4) at the request of a Republican governor in a "Nixon goes to China" move. Riley added another twist: He claimed that Jesus of Nazareth would want this tax hike.
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Source: HighBeam Research, Alabamans protect the GOP brand.(Politico)