What's Conservative About That?

The current crop of supposed GOP presidental hopefuls gathered and engaged in impressive one-upsmanship in New Hampshire last night. Each seemed to out do the other with crowd-appealing one-liners, such as one would-be candidate's demand to:

"Get government off my back!"

And another's to:

"Cut the capital gains tax down to zero!"

I don't know about our backs, but as someone who is truly conservative, I think government should absolutely get out of our bedrooms, our vaginas, our ovaries and our uteruses.

Also as someone who is truly conservative, I don't think I or other middle-Americans who aren't rich enough to have to ever worry about the capital gains tax should be picking up the tab for those who are.

Reducing the capital gains tax from the current 15% to zero means that all of the multimillionaires and multibillionaires who are currently able to pay 20% less in taxes on their income (if they pay anything at all) than they would otherwise because laws have been enacted to let them claim their income as capital gains, would legally and officially be able to pay ZERO taxes on their income.

I understand why so many of the nation's lawmakers would love that. The vast majority of them are millionaires and the bulk of their campaign contributions come from their fellow multimillionaires and multibillionaires. So, of course, they would love for you and me to shoulder the total tax burden and give them an even freer ride than they are already getting.

The only way that's conservative is that it conserves -- and adds to -- their very fat financial portfolios that they have accumulated on our backs -- those very backs they want government to get off of.