Will the Real Obama Please Shut Up?

Here’s President Obama on 60 Minutes tonight:

“Well, I think that— as a general proposition, you don’t want to be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals…And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don’t want to use the tax code—is to punish people.”

And here’s candidate Obama last year:

Mr. Obama, by contrast, started out much more directly, suggesting that if you make $150,000 or less you may be poor or middle class. A family with an income above $250,000, he went on to say, is “doing well.” And if you find yourself in that category, he’s going to target you for a tax hike — all in the name of creating “a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code.”

So — what will Obama actually do? He talks a great centrist game, even to the point of hiring all kinds of former Clintonites. But when push comes to shove — and these days, that happens almost hourly — President Obama rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to swing to the left.

Taxes are going up. Sometimes directly, as “on the rich.” Sometimes indirectly, as the savings of the middle class are inflated away. And mostly way-indirectly, as the poor are kept poor thanks to Obama’s budgets putting the economy on permanent slowdown.

Deal with it: He won.