I think it's important to understand, that Republicans don't consider payroll taxes to be taxes at all. Remember Ronald Reagan who is credited with lowering taxes? He lowered income taxes, but raised social security taxes. People went to the polls and re-elected him in 1984 because they thought he lowered taxes, when most of them were paying more taxes than ever.

                  Then there was the discussion of the rebate checks to boost the economy. The Republicans said poor people shouldn't get rebates because they never paid any taxes, but they'd been paying the inflated Reagan payroll taxes for years.

                  Finally, raising the cap on who pays Social Security taxes whas probably the one good idea Obama had. Now that McCain has co-opted that, what does he have?