What the Hell Do Voters Care About Anyway?

Nick Gillespie | October 19, 2006

As someone genuinely uninterested in politics, I apologize for so many election-related posts of late. But WTF, here's anudder:

The Christian Science Monitor talks up a Gallup poll that finds the top concerns of voters are, in descending order, Iraq, economy, terrorism, health care, Social Security, political corruption, taxes, gasoline prices, immigration, same-sex marriage. Partisans take note: The Dems are "trusted to do a better job" on all these issues, even taxes (whatever that means).

The GOP's latest tactic? Waving the bloody shirt (so to speak) of whiskey-voiced, putative tax-hiker Rep. Charles Rangel, (D-N.Y.) who said in a September interview with Bloomberg News, that he could not "cannot think of one" of President Bush's first-term tax cuts that should be renewed. But as the CSM notes, Rangel, in the same interview said that:

a priority for the new Congress should be reforming the alternative minimum tax, a system designed originally to make sure wealthy people cannot avoid paying taxes but which has increasingly affected middle-class taxpayers. That will be an expensive reform, and Rangel wants to reinstate the "pay-as-you-go" system that requires new spending to be covered by revenue increases.

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