The Obama administration's proposed $90 billion bank fee isn't a huge deal, but it's brilliant politics. Benen quotes MSNBC:
There was some speculation this week about the politics: "[I]t does put Republicans in a box. It forces them to make a choice of siding with the banks or not. And who is going to want to argue that banks shouldn't pay for their own bailout?"
The natural instinct of the teabaggers and wingnut right is to take the opposite position of the president and the Democrats. This tax will force them into defending the Wall Street banks. Naturally, they've always supported the banks -- it was CNBC's Rick Santelli who sparked the teabagger movement, and he's clearly no enemy of Wall Street. The whole "populist" facade is merely a cover for their outrage over a liberal black man winning the White House.
So if the president and the Democrats make 2010 the year of paybacks against the financial sector, it'll expose the teabaggers and wingnuts for who they really are.