Comment: Dakota demon.(Republicans obediently attack Senator Tom Daschle)(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 21-JAN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

It would be nice if President Bush had meant what he said the other day when he told a cheering audience in California, "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!" That is, it would be nice if he had meant that he does not regard the unlikely prospect of an increase in the taxes paid by the rich as an appropriate cause for which to lay down his life. Alas, there is every indication that, far from meaning what he said, he merely meant what he meant.

The "they" Bush was vowing to stop by making the ultimate sacrifice is actually a "he": Tom Daschle, the Senate Majority Leader. Or, rather, a straw man by that name. In a speech the day before, Daschle had hypothesized a connection between the abrupt disappearance of projected federal budget surpluses and...

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