From Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):
“Marginal tax rates are the lowest they’ve been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts. The people’s desires have changed, but we’re still stuck in our old issue set.”
The noteworthy thing about this quote isn’t that Patrick McHenry is a Republican, it’s that he’s Patrick McHenry. This is not Olympia Snowe. McHenry is a young man who made his bones by insisting loudly and on all occasions that, no matter who else was in the room, he was still the most right-wing guy there. But he’s also a young man who made his name as a guy willing to do whatever it took to climb the political ladder. If he’s decided that maybe taxes aren’t the road to electoral glory anymore, the GOP better start looking for another issue.
For more, read “Getting Ahead in the GOP,” Ben Wallace-Wells’s profile of McHenry in the Washington Monthly a few years ago.
