A new campaign ad from the Cuccinelli campaign, this one not only featuring the candidate (sans necktie), but also fixed on a theme: tax reduction/reform:
Quick points…
* This is the ad from Mayberry. Shot in what looks like a hardware store, Ken’s talking to folks who sell home improvement — a subtle way to say he wants to improve the tax code. Bonus points for having Cuccinelli appear in an open collared shirt, with the working man’s T-shirt underneath. Sure, he probably just took off his tie for this shot, but it works with the theme.
* The GOP embraces economic populism. Consider the text:
I’ve a plan to make Virginia an engine for job growth
It starts with closing tax loopholes and putting an end to special interest giveaways
We’ll use the savings to cut taxes for those who’ve earned it: job creating small businesses and middle class families
The powerful and well-connected already get their breaks
As Governor, I’ll be on your side
There’s a serious policy point hidden in these few words about rationalizing Virginia’s tax code. But it’s cloaked in the kind of language usually reserved for Democrats. Go after the fat cats who got theirs and redistribute that money n the form of tax cuts for the little guy. It’s also a jab at Terry McAuliffe, whose GreenTech auto company pulled millions of dollars worth of subsidies and tax breaks out of Mississippi.
* All of it is because Ken’s on “your side.” Contrast this with Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remark and you see how big a change this is in Republican thinking. If Cuccinelli is serious about cleansing the tax code of “giveaways,” then he is consciously turning his back on over a generation’s worth of bipartisan political practice. The tax code has become a play ground for carve outs and incentives, breaks and abatements, all aimed at specific businesses and geographic areas. Closing those loopholes and using the savings to enact a broad rate cut? That’s shrewd, in no small part because it not only irritates the special pleaders, it also gives Cuccinelli the most unexpected of political backstops: Barack Obama.
Recall that the President was, for a time, quite keen on closing loopholes. Not because he wanted to lower overall tax burdens, but because he forced the opposition to dance on the head of a pin while defending those breaks.
Cuccinelli is reaching for the same ground. It attempts to confound the narrative (advanced by, among others, Bill Bolling and Rep. Gerry Connolly) that any talk of tax cuts is fiscally foolish. Coupled with closing the loopholes of “the powerful and well-connected,” however, it makes those narrators appear as if they are defending a corrupt status quo.
