Politics & Power Quote by Dick Morris

A political operator’s cynicism is doing the heavy lifting here: Morris isn’t arguing about tax policy so much as narrating politics as a confidence game where no one is allowed to admit what they want. The line’s first move is to convert a complex coalition into a single, secret desire - Democrats “oppose tax cuts” - then immediately claim that desire is unspeakable. That “cannot say so publicly” is the crucial insinuation. It paints Democratic messaging not as persuasion but as concealment, a performance staged for voters presumed to be reflexively pro-tax-cut.

The second sentence sets the trap. If Democrats must “support” lowering taxes, any objection they raise can be rebranded as bad faith. Morris supplies the translation key in advance: arguments about distribution become “class warfare rhetoric.” That phrasing isn’t neutral description; it’s a delegitimizer that treats equity concerns as a cynical tactic rather than an ideological commitment or empirical debate. The subtext is that the only honest position is to cut taxes without conditions, and that critics are merely resentful or manipulative.

Context matters: Morris came of age in the late-20th-century realignment when “tax relief” became a moralized Republican brand and Democrats, especially in the Clinton era, tried to thread a needle - endorse middle-class cuts while challenging windfalls for the wealthy. Morris turns that triangulation into indictment. It’s a strategic quote aimed at readers who already suspect elite liberal hypocrisy, offering them a tidy story: Democrats don’t disagree with us on outcomes, they disagree with us on how openly they can say it.