But bear in mind that political incentives rarely align with long-term national fiscal health. It’s very hard to get any politician to decry spending in any meaningful way. Spending is how they buy off their constituencies. Telling the voters in your district that your plan is to cut the distribution of free ponies they’ve grown to expect usually leads to defeats, not wins.

This is why there is little difference between Team Blue and Team Red when it comes to spending. Increases are cooked in, costs are diffuse and benefits are concentrated. Any spending creates “special interests” of the recipients of that spending and each program costs so little to each citizen, that it’s very difficult to express the aggregate cost.

It’s also why “deep”, “draconian”, “crippling”, and “dangerous” cuts are not cuts at all. They are decreases in planned increases. They are budget cuts, not spending cuts. Even when purposefully exaggerated (“we’ll cut a trillion over 10 years”, ten years they won’t be in office and cannot control, so a trillion really means 100 million this year), such a “cut” becomes less than 10% of the overspending they planned for that year alone. Spending still increases year by year.

I agree about how the debate is framed. Democrats are better at selling the free ponies, Republicans have no philosophy. They occasionally voice smaller government rhetoric, but seldom mean it, for the reasons above.

Case in point, the current debate about the republicans being the obstructionist in regards to the middle class tax cuts. Why do you never hear from republicans that they have passed numerous bills that would extend the middle class tax cuts. It is the democrats that haven’t passed anything and are the ones holding the middle class tax cuts hostage to get an increase in taxes on the rich. Rarely do you hear about spending cuts, which is the other bigger part of the equation. The democrats won’t bring it up, because they don’t what to cut. Why aren’t the republicans, speaking loudly about the lack of democrats ideas on spending cuts. Where is the balance that the democrats have talked about. This is an issue that the republicans should be winning easily but are getting their butts kicked instead, because they are terrible at communicating and defining the issue.

The republicans do have a tougher road to haul since most of the media is in bed with the democrats, but they need to do the work. Everytime someone brings up republicans being the obstuctionist about middle class tax cuts the republicans should call them out on it and explain why they are wrong. Republicans have to become much better communicators of what they are trying to sell. They can’t let democrats and the media continue to dominate how each issue is defined. If they were to do this, the whole republican brand would be lifted and until they do it they will have a hard time winning national elections.

Or maybe this is the real republicans. Maybe the rhetoric about spending cuts, lower defeicts, balanced budgets is just talk. They really don’t care about any of it, but just want to sound a little different then the democrats. If they don’t want to slip into irrelevance they need to find themsleves in smaller government and figure out a better way to communicate about it and define the issue. They can’t be afraid to take on the opponent and the media.

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