Is 'Class Warfare' Just Rhetoric?

Most Americans support a tax increase for the wealthy to help reduce the national deficit, according to a new CBS News poll released Oct. 3.

Of those polled, 64 percent support a tax increase for millionaires over all. Broken down among party affiliations, 83 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans polled support the increase.

According to Steve Benning, a writer for the Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog, these numbers indicate a wide belief in the concept of class warfare among the American public.

"When 40% of self-identified Republicans endorse a tax increase on the very wealthy, it suggests we’re talking about an idea with fairly broad support," Benning writes.

But last week we posted about a Potomac resident with a different perspective. :

"Economic Success has somehow become the new boogie man; some in the Democratic party are now casting about for enemies and business leaders and anyone who has achieved success in terms of rank or fiscal success is being cast as a bad guy in a black hat. This is counter to the American Dream and is really turning off so many people that love American [sic] and basically carry our country on their back by paying taxes and by employing people and creating GDP.

This is a bad move all designed by some pollster who said this is the way to get votes during the re-election. It should be stopped. We should be healing and creating teams NOT dividing and pitting people against one another."

What do you think? In light of these numbers from the CBS News poll, is class warfare just bad rhetoric as Leonsis suggests? Or is there something more to this hot topic?

After a very unscientfic poll of our readers last week, we learned that 14 of 19 responders (73 percent, if we want to get fancy) agreed with Ted's take. Do you still?