If We Don’t Admit That Taxes Are an Issue, Can We Make the Issue Go Away?

The Washington Post devotes most of a page to summarizing the views of Virginia gubernatorial candidates Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds on the major issues of the election. (The article seems to have no real headline online, and isn’t linked from anywhere obvious, but in the actual paper, it dominates page C4 under the headline “Where do they stand on the issues? A Rundown of Competing 4‐​Year Agendas for Virginia.”)


And what are the issues the Post thinks are important? Education, transportation, energy and environment, abortion, gun control, health care, and labor. All fine issues to debate.


But what about taxes? Or government spending? Or the size and scope of government? McDonnell’s television ads focus heavily on Deeds’s apparent willingness to raise taxes, and he’s been rising in the polls as those ads have run. Could it be that the voters think taxes are an important issue?


Turn to a front‐​page story on New York’s special congressional election, and you’ll find Todd Harris, who has been a media adviser to John McCain, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and now Marco Rubio, making this point: “A lot of the establishment Republicans underestimated the grass‐​roots anger across the country about spending and the expansion of the federal government.”


The Post wishes that taxes weren’t an issue in Virginia. In fact, the Post wishes that voters wanted their taxes raised. But wishing won’t make it so.