I must admit, Grover Norquist has a point here:
The second great game changer was Obama’s decision to extend and make permanent 85 percent of the Bush tax cuts—the cuts of 2001, 2003, and the AMT patch. This was Obama’s great blunder that stripped him of his political power for his entire second term. Had Obama simply extended 90 percent of the tax cuts for one year or two years, he would have held over the heads of Republicans the ability to raise taxes simply by refusing to allow another extension. But he threw that power away like a child tossing aside a pearl of great but unrecognized value.
Particularly the AMT patch. Background here: suffice it to say that it spawned a budgetary trick that the Democrats particularly enjoyed using, and I have yet to figure out why Barack Obama was so eager to give it up in exchange for… breaking a campaign promise to end the Bush tax cuts.
I wonder if he has figured it out, either.
