You can tell already when the New York Times is backpedaling on an eventual Romney win the weekend before the election:
If Mr. Romney wins and wants a second term, he would be wise to wed an economic narrative about innovation with a narrative that will save his party from extinction by making comprehensive immigration reform a central item on his agenda. If Mr. Romney succeeds in reviving a moderate Republicanism that recognizes that an increasingly interconnected world will require an increasingly diverse work force, he could potentially drag his party into the 21st century.
Gee — where was that talk in 2008, Mr. Westen? Expect more cautionary tales like this from the left trying to preserve any shred of government that exists.
We are $1.3 trillion in the hole every year. They know it’s not sustainable, but they continue to spend, spend, spend because Democrats can’t be viewed as responsible for the cuts that must come.
…which is why the heavy lifting — and the credit or blame — will rest entirely in Romney’s hands, along with Congressional Republicans.
You’ll hear cries of “guard the change” and so forth. Conservatives would do well to remind progressives of two things: (1) elections do have consequences, and (2) such caution and pragmatism were never exhibited when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House in 2008 — a mistake that conservatives would be ill-advised to repeat, but altogether blameless to exercise should progressives obstruct real reform.
Republicans have a sacred duty to fix the budget. It will involve three things: closing loopholes, cutting spending, and yes — a tax increase. Yet Democrats will have to be willing to turn their sacred cows into hamburgers for it to work. Should they obstruct… in four years we may very well be on the road to fiscal insolvency as a nation. The stakes are truly that high.
Greece and Zimbabwe stand as warnings. The European Union is tottering. America has managed to survive as the best horse in the glue factory, but for how much longer?
The progressives have run out of our money. There is no one left to steal from. The American Constitution was never designed to support a late 19th century social welfare state. The sooner we realize as a polity that our government was never designed to provide what it does today, the sooner we’ll have a true solution.
…but so long as we continue to lean on “the god that failed” and ignore the very real harm the expansion of government does to working families, the loyal opposition will be blind to possibilities and consequences. Americans may be patriotic enough to pay more in taxes to fix the budget, but they will refuse to subsidize failures and inefficiencies.
The federal budget as it stands today could use a great deal of creative destruction and devolution to states and localities — provided the left is wise enough to adhere to the old Jeffersonian dictum that a government governs best when it governs least.