Mark Dayton: Minnesota's own John Kerry

Jonah Goldberg once called Sen. John Kerry "a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor." (With apologies to 19th-century Latin tutors.)

Minnesota's DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton is cast from the same mold.

"I'm going to use the powers of intellectual persuasion," he said at the beginning of his remarks at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "Taxes, I believe, are the lubricant for the machinery of our democracy."

I read this quote from Dayton's September 13 presentation and I heard John Kerry's voice in my head. (Ouch!) They obviously use the same playbook, but they must even have the same speechwriter.

"We have a moral responsibility ... to make taxes more fair," he said.

When I think of taxes, the first moral precepts that come to my mind are "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods." Or, for some tax morality from a source other than scripture, try Abraham Lincoln:

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

Dayton continually proves himself a short-sighted silver spooner who believes wealth is either inherited or redistributed, which, although it may be the story of his life, it denies the overall American experience.

And like Minnesota's perennial bore Walter Mondale, Dayton is campaigning on a promise to raise taxes.

On one hand, I admire Dayton's courage to talk up taxes at a time when the entire country is seething over Washington's phenomenally reckless spending and the nearly perpetual and exponential tax increases it will require. But really, Dayton's blindness is staggering. Anyone who still thinks you can target a tax hike at the rich without impacting the middle class with so much recent history to the contrary is chronically disconnected from reality. His "intellectual persuasion" is devoid of field experience.

Dayton's classist rhetoric characterizes a faith in a ruling class that is better qualified to spend money than the people who earn it. It is the sort of elitism that prompted statesmen like Ronald Reagan to refer to government as "they" instead of "we." We (the people) need a spokesman who is not an insider and will advocate for us against a presumptive oligarchy.

Dayton's tax metaphor is apt. His "lubricant" of democracy is what greases the palms, slickens politicians, and speeds up slippery slopes. It's the snake oil that deceives impressionable voters. We don't want to "lubricate" government any more.

P.J. O'Rourke said, "The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop." Maybe a little less grease will do the trick.

The truth Dayton and his ilk refuse to admit is that rich people create jobs - real, permanent jobs, better than government can ever offer, but taxes deter job creators from creating jobs. Entrepreneurism creates jobs, but taxes kill entrepreneurism. Dayton's "lubricant" of government burdens the people and kills prosperity.

Minnesotans are tired of Johnny-one-note politicians like Dayton whose only solution to any problem is a tax hike. The lubricant our democracy needs is free enterprise.