Make the Best of What's Still Around

It seems hard to recall now, but it’s helpful to remember that way back when the Bush tax cuts were originally passed, Democrats decried them as a giveaway for the rich that did little to help “working” Americans. Now, Democrats have embraced these tax cuts and claim that we can’t possibly get along without them. William McGurn reminds us just how much has changed since then in a WSJ piece called Obama's Middle-Class Tax Flip:

In any honest universe, this would be news. President Obama says the middle class benefits mightily from the Bush tax cuts and cannot afford to see them expire. Which provokes a question: Where has our press corps been these past 10 years?

For most of that time, Democrats have been hollering that the only people to benefit from the Bush tax cuts were Bill Gates, Wall Street bankers, and the guy with the top hat and monocle who appears on our Monopoly sets. Now the same press that accepted, approved and amplified the "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" trope leaves unchallenged a president who today tells us, oh, by the way, those Bush tax cuts are vital for America's middle class—and claims that the opposition to middle-class tax cuts proposed and put into law mainly by Republicans comes from...Republicans.

It is indeed a world turned upside down when Republicans are now being portrayed as the ones who want to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. It would be nice that with all the opprobrium and blame that Democrats have heaped upon George W. Bush over the years they at least could throw him a bone and acknowledge that his middle-class tax cuts were the right thing to do. Not likely to see that happen in this world.