Right-wing whining about taxes blasts apart GOP

It's breathtaking that anyone can grumble that the rich are paying too much in taxes and expect to be taken seriously. Yet this complaint has guided the Republican Party for 30 years.

Now, however, even Republican heavy hitters are starting to sour on this stale whine.

Mike Gibbons – a Republican millionaire who is running for Senate in Ohio – griped at a media event that middle-class Americans don't pay "any kind of a fair share" of income taxes, while the rich pay too much. Gibbons said the idea that the rich are winning out at the expense of the middle class is "absolutely false."

Gibbons's hinting that taxes should be raised on the middle class but not the rich has been assailed by the rest of the Republican field in the Senate primary. One rival even called Gibbons "Tax Hike Mike." Some of these Republicans have also opposed national GOP plans to raise taxes on the middle class.

Of course, I'm guessing the Democrats support Gibbons – just like how they keep praising Mike DeWine and calling those who oppose him fascists. The totalitarian Bush-era right-wing extremism that crushed the poor and working class still exists to some degree within both major parties, but in the past couple years, it's taken over the Democrats to the same extent that it ruled the Republicans for decades before. Bill Kristol becoming a Democrat wasn't a good sign for the party. Just days ago, a Reddit commenter said the Democrats "are the kings at being handed a fucking gift and dropping it off a cliff." The Democrats seizing the mantle as the party of Wall Street, incompetent technocrats, bullies, and incels sums up their tendency to squander a political bonanza. The Democrats' refusal to condemn Gibbons speaks volumes.

If the jackboot fits, wear it, Dems. And if it feels good, put it on.