“Matt,

You are taking a long view of the issue, which in my opinion depends on what
kind of society we want. That said, it does appear that every issue is seen
as the last battle of the war, which it is not.

I’m having trouble discerning whether the heated objections from the
Democrat side of the house, and Sanders and Welch in particular, are
ideologically fight-to-the-death driven, or simply grandstanding to make
their constituents smile. My gut says that for Bernie this is a nearly
religious issue. Not so much with Welch.

I suspect that the traditional Republicans will claim that the tax cut (or
maintenance of the status quo rather than the expiration of the Bush cuts)
is stimulative, whether they truly believe the economics, or if they believe
it is in their interest to assuage their constituents. The Tea Party folks
ought to despise it, if they are true to their desire to see the deficit
brought under control.

It will be interesting to see how this piece of legislation ends up, and if
Obama sees a bump in the polling of Independents.”