In a provocative post titled "Are you a fiscal conservative?" the Inquirer's financial columnist Andrew Cassel asks some good questions:

. . . [S]upply-siders aren't totally wrong - there is some growth effect from tax cuts. But it's not a large enough effect to make tax-cutting a painless exercise, as Congress and the Bush administration would like us to believe.

Moreover, most credible projections still show the deficit exploding after 2008, when the baby boomers start claiming Medicare and Social Security. No tax cut imaginable would make that problem go away.

That's why a lot of economists describe Bush's tax cuts as not really cuts at all, but rather tax shifts. Today's deficits add to a mountain of debt that our kids and grandkids will have to pay off, one way or another.

Which brings us back to my original question. If you call yourself a fiscal conservative, what does that mean?

Does it mean you believe in sound budgets, paying your bills, and living within your means? In political terms, does it mean you think government's size should be limited by our ability and/or willingness to pay for it?

Or does it simply mean you just personally want to pay less taxes, end of story and damn the consequences?

If you call yourself a fiscal conservative, I think you have to decide.

But in political terms, I think the Republican refusal to raise taxes is grounded in political pragmatism rather than sincere political ideology. Surely they're smart enough to know that (as my father used to say) "if you're going to dance you have to pay the fiddler."

At least, someone will.

I think that Republicans may be deliberately shifting that someone. There's been a lot of speculation about whether the Republicans might be engineering their own defeat this November.

Granted, if there's a deliberate strategy of defeat, no one will admit to it. But let us suppose that the Republicans know that sooner or later, taxes must be raised. Wouldn't it make sense to shift the responsibility for unpopular but inevitable tax hikes to a Democrat-controlled Congress?

The remaining Republicans could valiantly fight the tax hikes, and even if lame-duck Bush were faced with "no choice" but to go along, why, it would be the Democrats actually who did it.

Meanwhile the Republicans could continue to oppose tax cuts.

Americans love consistency!