"There is nothing more important than cuttingtaxes in the face of a war"

Congress Approves a Bill to Extend Bush's Tax Cuts
The Republican-controlled Congress easily passed legislation on Thursday that would extend expiring provisions of last year's tax cuts for families as well as about 20 business tax cuts, at a cost of about $146 billion over 10 years.

Even though Democrats protested that the tax cuts would worsen the federal deficit and should be paid for with spending cuts or other tax increases, party leaders gave their members free rein to vote for the bill rather than incur the wrath of voters just a few weeks before Election Day.

I am not sure if conceding victory to the Republicans in this case was the best idea. It is irresponsible to continue cutting taxes without a way to make up for the lost revenue, but the tax cuts in and off themselves were not all that objectionable and was mentioned in the quote above there were political dangers to putting up a fight. Letting a Republican partisan like Porter Goss become CIA director is certainly worse than allowing these cuts to pass.

Update: After reading a more in-depth examination of the tax cut in question (available here), I have changed my mind. It was a bad bill with a small middle class tax breaks thrown in for political reasons. The Democrats should have opposed it outright. The legislative appeasement of our party stands in contrast to the combative rhetoric of the campaign. This soft approach is not all that good an idea, because it makes the Democrats seem unprincipled, weakens the enthusiam of the party faithful and there is the danger that we might lose the election, in which case there will be almost zero chance of retaking the ground we lost. As Patton once said (in the movie at least) I don't like paying for the same real estate twice. This strategy has failed us in the past (the 2002 congressional elections being the most recent example) and may fail us again.