Eye Recommend --- Increase Taxes? Talk by Donald Trump Alarms GOP

Trump in Nashville on Saturday

INCREASE TAXES?  TALK BY DONALD TRUMP ALARMS GOP, by Alan Rappeport --
Read the entire article here.

what eye thynk:  Watching the GOP try to put out the spreading brush fire that is Donald Trump makes every day interesting.

"For years, Republicans have run for office on promises of cutting taxes and bolstering business to stimulate economic growth, pledging allegiance to a Reaganesque model of conservatism that has largely become the party's orthodoxy.

But this election cycle, the Republican presidential candidate who currently leads in most polls is taking a different approach, and it is jangling the nerves of some of the party's most traditional supporters.

The tendency of that candidate, the billionaire developer Donald J. Trump, to make provocative, headline-grabbing speeches has helped obscure an emerging set of beliefs:  that he would raise taxes in certain areas, particularly on corporations that he believes do not act in the best interests of the United States.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on American companies that put their factories in other countries."

He has specifically mentioned making Ford "pay a price" for moving its factories to other countries, while conveniently failing any mention of his Trump clothing line which is currently manufactured in China--a country he has hypocritically called out for stealing American jobs during several campaign stops.

"He has suggested he would increase taxes on the compensation of hedge fund managers.  And he has vowed to change laws that allow American companies to benefit from cheaper tax rates by using mergers to base their operations outside the United States. 

Alarmed that those ideas might catch on with some of Mr. Trump's Republican rivals--as his immigration policies have--the Club for Growth, an anti-tax think tank, is pulling together a team of economists to scrutinize his proposals and calculate the economic impact if he is elected."

God, forbid! An outcome that seemed so remote as to be listed under "impossible" just a few short weeks ago; but, if Republican voters don't come to their senses, is approaching the not-so-remote-after-all possibility stage.

"'All of those are anti-growth policies,'" (here we go again with the GOP low-taxes-for-the-rich, trickle-down-to-"them" blather), said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, a group that Republican candidates routinely court.  'Yes, he's a businessman, but if those are policies he implements, they'll drive the economy into the ground and we'll see huge drops in G.D.P., and frankly I think it would lead to massive loss of jobs."

I'm at a loss to understand how honeying the pot to get American companies to bring jobs back to America will result in "massive loss of jobs," but maybe it makes sense to the American taxpayers who have over-indulged in the GOP Kool-aid to the point of permanent "Repoxication" followed by brain cell death.

The article continues to note how Mr. Trump suggested he would raise taxes on carried interest--a big no-no in the GOP playbook.  Being proud of his personal lack of preparation makes figuring out where he really stands is difficult to pin down, no matter your party affiliation.  In one interview he said a flat tax would be a viable improvement to America's tax system.  Moments later, he suggested that "a flat tax would be unfair."  

For now, however, his tax "plan," if you can call it one, seems more in line with Democrats than Republicans--which is causing the GOP establishment to break out in hives.  Other conservative candidates may be only too happy to mimic Trump's immigration mantra, after all that fits into the Republican no-one-but-us sensibility; but I don't see them being able to bring themselves to utter the words "raise" and "taxes" in the same sentence.

Of course, they could just go for it and then conveniently change their minds.  It worked for Poppy (Read-My-Lips) Bush.

In the meantime...

"Les Funtleyder, a portfolio manager at E Squared Asset Management in New York, said that..if (Mr. Trump's) positions on raising taxes on their businesses gain traction, Mr. Funtleyder suggested, then some members of the financial industry will probably form a political action committee or donate to a candidate who would tell their side of the story."

As if we weren't perfectly aware of it already.