When doing research for my job, I ventured on to the official website of the Michigan House Repubicans. Something caught my eye right away: A very prominent tab on the top of the main page that says "Taxpayer Resources." As I clicked on that tab and looked around, it occurred to me what a total shambles has been made of the "low taxes" brand image.

Go to that page, and you'll see this message:

"Working every day to serve you better and protect the hard-earned money you and your family send to Lansing."

Sounds inspiring! What do they put on the page to accomplish this?

Well, there is a picture of a pile of money. What does that pile of money mean? Five subpages of supposed "taxpayer resources" are also provided to give you the answer:

The first, entitled "Job Resources," is self explanatory: It links to jobs banks and information on how to file for unemployment. This is nice and all, but they said they were going to protect my hard earned money. What does this do for that?

Additionally, several of these links go to state government sponsored jobs banks, which compete with private sector jobs banks, leaving me with the overall impression that this particular "taxpayer resource" is instead needlessly and redundantly eating up a lot of this taxpayer's resources.

The second page, "Information for Michigan Seniors," doesn't improve matters. Apparently, my hard earned money is well protected when government prints up travel tips for seniors and provides special government websites that make it easier for seniors to tap into other government resources.

The third page, "Useful State Links," protects my hard-earned money by providing one-stop shopping for the links to all of the state and local government agencies that spend my hard-earned money.

The "Visitor Information" page provides me directions for how to visit my hard-earned money in Lansing and watch it get spent.

And finally, no fewer than three of the first four of my "taxpayer resources" under the "Free Publications" page are the Child Safety Coloring Book, the Getting to Know Michigan Coloring Book, and the Recycling and Learning activity book and coloring book.

What? No "Boston Tea Party" coloring book? I'd even settle for a "How to Appeal My Property Taxes" coloring book.

If you're looking for actual information about how the House Republicans plan to "protect the hard-earned money you and your family send to Lansing," then you will not find it anywhere on this page. "Taxpayer Resources" is mostly a large collection of government websites reminding Michigan taxpayers why they don't have as many resources as they used to.

Sometime during the Reagan Revolution, and maybe all the way back to the tax revolts of the late 1970s, politicians on the side of lower taxes and smaller government could communicate that whole point by using the word "taxpayer" in place of other identifiers. A Jimmy Carter Democrat would refer to voters as "citizens" on his door-to-door literature and radio commercials while the Reagan Republican would doggedly keep calling them "taxpayers." The voters would get the implicit message: "Both of these guys are watching my wallet, but only one of them is promising not to take it from me."

While this worked well for a long time, the message was progressively worn down. Even before Reagan was out of the Oval Office, George H.W. Bush promised we could read his lips, and (intentionally or not) gave birth to the iconic image of a Republican who seeks to fool voters by calling them "taxpayers" but not treating them like it.

He's had many imitators since.

A recent example: Michigan's state income tax hike in 2007 passed with the support of 55 Democrats in the House and 15 in the Senate -- short of a majority in both cases. It took four GOP senators and two GOP state representatives to put the tax hike over the top.

Today, if you look at the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that Americans for Tax Reform asks all lawmakers to sign, you'll find just five Michigan state senators and eleven state representatives on the list (and two of those lawmakers are Democrats.) This is a lower percentage than many other states -- such as Maryland -- considered much more "red" than Michigan.