Can GOP Fatten Up Around the Middle?

At a recent breakfast in Washington, D.C., a rising young Republican senator explained the divisions in his party in a particularly succinct manner: a conflict between the donor base and the GOP rank-in-file.

“The donor class,” this senator told me, “really cares about one thing: lower taxes. Most in the party don’t see this as the most crucial issue.”

Although some donors care about other issues, including Israel and, sometimes, social issues, the big money in the party is focused on reducing tax burdens. After all, if you are an investment bank, pharmaceutical firm or oil company, your concerns involve finding ways to avoid, or at least slow down, the taxman.

In the past, many grass-roots Republicans may have shared this concern, but other issues – like a weak economy, rising inequality and crime, as well as terrorism – increasingly may become more important. The very nature of the current recovery, beneficial to the donor class but not so much for the vast majority of Americans, works against the traditional antitax focus of the GOP. Does anyone on Main Street believe lower capital-gains taxes, which would preserve more of the wealth of hedge funders, corporate hegemons and venture capitalists, helps them?

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.