So the big surprise was that McAuliffe’s smash and grab against Virginia families [1] is going to cost us $1,700 per family. From the Washington Post:
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II (R) has tallied up the cost of his Democratic opponent’s wish list and found that Terry McAuliffe would need nearly $14 billion in new tax revenue to fulfill his campaign promises [2] in the next four years, according to a draft of the Republican’s analysis.
Cuccinelli’s campaign said McAuliffe’s expansive vision of Virginia government means that taxes would have to increase by more than $1,700 on a typical family of four to pay for everything.
That sucks, right? Well… until you hear the rejoinder from the McAuliffe campaign:
“It’s a shame that Ken Cuccinelli has spent more time making up numbers about Terry’s plan than he has explaining how he would pay for his own,” McAuliffe campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said in an e-mail. He also said that Cuccinelli’s calculations, by leaving out any money from the landmark transportation-funding plan passed with Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s backing this year, suggest that Cuccinelli is backing away from his pledge to implement the act if he is elected.
That right there is a damn fine point… no no no, not that T-Mac’s numbers aren’t pretty damn wild (they are) and not that Cuccinelli should explain how he would pay for his own tax reform (it’s called a function of growth and time, Marxists… learn basic economics before talking tax policy) but that in very stark terms we simply have no idea what Cuccinelli’s tax plan means for working families.
Yet.
So here’s the math:
McAuliffe: $1,700 out of your pocket.
Cuccinelli: $700 put back into your pocket.
…and if there’s a place to pivot in the next three weeks, there it is. Cuccinelli is rumored to be down by about three points right now according to internal polling, and far from the doom and gloom the press would rather have us believe.
The question is, can the Cuccinelli campaign give us that contrast and hammer it home?
[3]
We shall see. But I tell ya… Cuccinelli putting $700 dollars back into the paychecks of working families vs. McAuliffe stealing $1,700 of bread out of the mouths of working families?
That works. Let’s have that conversation.