Liberal Talk Radio

Leave it to Matt Drudge to create a controversy out of a presidential-campaign practice.

Drudge has had a link up on his site for the past 24 hours declaring: John Edwards: ‘We’ll have to raise taxes’….

Drudge is referencing Edwards’ appearance on yesterday’s Meet the Press, which, by the way, Bruno and I spent some time discussing yesterday on our own show.

Now, to contextualize this, Edwards generally gave off the impression of a high school debater practicing his talking points. Clearly unpolished this early in the race, Edwards took a couple swings at some Russert softballs, made decent contact on a couple, and fouled off the rest. Nothing in Edwards appearance suggested any kind of determination about any of his policy proposals, and given that Edwards equivocated even when Russert asked him “who’s going to win the Super Bowl,” I can’t imagine that there’s a single point in what Johnny E. discussed yesterday that will make it into his 2008 stump speech unaltered.

But leave it to Drudge to find a Democratic conspiracy to rip the hard-earned dollars out of middle-class American hands even from such nonsense as Edwards put forth yesterday. More to the point: Hey Drudge — how, exactly, is America supposed to pay for a massive new program wihtout raising taxes?

Drudge and the rest of the center-right would do well to take accounting 101. You see, in the real world (i.e., anywhere except the parallel universe where Bush keeps his brain these days), spending requires money. Money needs to come from somewhere, and in the context of public services, we call that somewhere “taxes.”

I know Drudge and his shut-in followers find it challenging to believe after the neo-Voodoo Economics of the past 6+ years, but eventually the bills come due on this stuff, and if we don’t face that reality, we’re all going to be in a world of hurt when China puts out its inevitable margin call.

Of course, when the President puts in a budget request of $2.9 trillion and STILL insists that his tax cuts were a good idea, I guess it has a tendency to distort your perspective.