New York, July 26—The collapse of Reaganomics (as the event is accurately being described) is testimony to a failure of both nerve and understanding. Senator Robert Dole, the chairman of the Finance Committee, who mobilized all 11 Republican senators on the committee to vote for the highest single peacetime tax increase in U.S. history (in round figures, $100 billion), is suddenly being greeted as a hero —by Democrats. And with good reason. In the first place he has thrown in with voodoo redistributionism, by coming in with a tax bill substantially aimed at higher-income taxpayers and corporations. And he has baptized that bill as a Republican measure (all the Democratic senators voted against it); so that Republicans running for re-election will have the choice of explaining to their constituents either a) that Americans are under-taxed; or b) that Reagan made an awful ass of himself in 1981 by asking for more tax reductions than he should have. I suppose a finished politician will come up with a third way of saying it, but if I were his Democratic opponent, I wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Senator Dole and his Republican colleagues appear incapable of making one or two very simple declarations.
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