To see the conventional wisdom being recycled through an otherwise perceptive blogsite:
Having Ryan on the ticket will make it difficult for the losers of the election to claim that the winners [don’t] have some claim to pursue their fiscal vision. A decisive electoral resolution to this high stakes political fight is actually kind of scary, no matter where you come down on issues like Medicare, Medicaid and tax policy. But it’ll also be good for the country if it means the government will have new running room to pay at least passing attention to things like mass unemployment and eroding infrastructure that the next president will have to deal with, whether he’s a Republican or Democrat.
What planet is this guy living on?
Here's what's going to happen if Republicans lose: they will do nothing of the kind to honor Democrats' "claim to pursue their fiscal vision" any more than they did four years ago. They will claim they lost because they didn't nominate a True Conservative® to lead their ticket, and spend the next four years hounding, badgering and harassing the administration, culminating in (my prediction) impeachment of the President, the Attorney General, or some other leading Cabinet minister for the high crimes and misdemeanors of Solyndra/Fast & Furious/ACORN/voter fraud/take your pick.
Here's what's going to happen if Democrats lose: they will offer concessions towards Republicans' "claim to pursue their fiscal vision," which will include cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Republicans will claim that Democrats' concession are insufficient, and proceed to finish off the job that they began under Reagan 30 years ago. How successful they will be depends entirely on whether or not the Democrats retain control of at least one House of Congress---which, if Team Rand wins in November, is fairly unlikely.
But no matter who wins, in the meantime the Beltway policy and media elites will shift the focus of the campaign away from the most pressing matters of the day and towards their legislative Favorite Toys---deficit reduction and entitlement reform---when the issues that voters still care most deeply about are jobs, and money, and mortgage/student loan relief. There will be no "running room' afforded for big-ticket infrastructure spending or jobs programs, regardless who wins the election, because we're not going to hear those issues being debated. Because they cost real money, and require more audacity than simply tinkering with the tax code. What we are going to hear instead is either, "We need to cut the deficit substantially or we'll end up like Greece" or "We need to cut the deficit smartly in conjunction with incremental tax increases." That's the depth and breadth of the debate we will hear for the next three months, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself.
And that's also why, no matter who wins this election, the winning party is going to be primed to deliver on their promises come January, which for voters will be a choice between (a) savage austerity or (b) austerity on the installment plan. But there will be no ambitious jobs and infrastructure programs being put forth, because the window of opportunity to get such programs enacted into law was slammed shut two years ago. It happened when the administration pivoted away from its stimulus agenda and embraced the wonderfulness of Smart & Sensible Deficit Reduction®. Would love to be proved wrong here, of course, but most everything I've seen and heard emanating from our Serious Persons over the past couple of years leads me to believe that the fix is largely in, and that the only questions remaining to be resolved in the short term are what levels of punishment will need to be inflicted upon the sick, the poor and the elderly.
---Vitelius
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