The Poor Must Be Punished ...

... for being poor, even if it means prolonging the recession.

James Fallows points out the cynicism and inconsistency of the Republican push to repeal the payroll tax break for most wage earners. He even goes so far as to describe the Republicans behaving like Moonies with their fanatical ideological positions on everything. Worse still, he accuses them of cynicism and breaking with their own legacy:

I had thought that Republican absolutism about taxes, while harmful to the country and out of sync with even the party's own Reaganesque past, at least had the zealot's virtue of consistency. Now we see that it can be set aside when it applies to poorer people, and when setting it aside would put maximum drag on the economy as a whole. So this means that its real guiding principle is... ??? You tell me.

In the Republican version of the Gospel, it is poor Lazarus who burns in hell while Dives (a "maker" not a "taker") feasts in heaven.

And in my perpetual pessimism, I think that the Republicans might just well get that permanent one party state that they are trying to create. Y'all ready for when the HUAC comes back?