Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Obama Finds McCain’s Soft Spot …

… And goes for it.

On a day when McCain is highlighting his own ethical cleanliness by trying to abolish earmarks for a year, Obama dings McCain for perhaps his most egregious policy reversal: Bush’s tax cuts.

The logic of why he first voted against the tax cuts, then supported making them permanent, is contorted at best. Jonathan Chait summed it up most pithily:

McCain explained that his position was perfectly consistent because, while he may have opposed the tax cuts in the first place, letting them expire would amount to a tax hike; and, he said, "I've never voted for a tax increase in twenty-four years . . . and I will never vote for a tax increase, nor support a tax increase." In fact, McCain had proposed a tobacco tax increase in 1998. Nor would his position have made sense anyway. (Some economists favor higher tax rates and others prefer lower tax rates, but none would oppose a tax cut and then oppose its repeal simply because it had already been enacted.)

Now McCain says he thinks the tax cuts are necessary to support a flagging economy. But Obama has an easy retort: How would you know? McCain himself admitted that he knows “a lot less about economics than … about military and foreign policy issues.” The flip-flop/confession combo is likely to be one of the strongest weapons against McCain in the general. No surprise Obama wanted to be seen as the first one to use it.