Frankly, NOTHING should be off the table b/c of the severity of the crisis. No point sparing anyone from getting haircuts in their funding b/c we wanna play the scared cow game. The question isn't if, but by how much. People would be a lot more willing, even if grudgingly so, to pay a higher tax bill if they knew the money was only going to pay down the debt and not for special interest pet projects or misguided Keynesian boondoggles.
As to the Republicans, they need to better convey to people how bad the alternative is (at least from their POV) and stop taking a knife to a gunfight. Politics is dirty business and, unfortunately, that MO works (hell, Jefferson once claimed that Adams was a mentally unbalanced hermaphrodite and that was around 200 years ago). I've heard different dems push the demographic line, but that doesn't explain it as almost 12-15 million people fewer voted this time around than in 2008 (
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html). This was Romney's to lose......and he did. Also, confirms Robert's gambit to defeat obamacare at the ballot box a bad decision.
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Originally Posted by mim
....Obama got 6,173,859 votes to Romney’s 5,8171,551...
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wow, voter disinterest really must have been high this cycle. Not even sure if that second number is real. Must be mathematics...Biden style.
Also, regarding mim's point above, the same is true of Social Security.