That is a very good point. The left is on the road to Chavez and there is nothing left to stop them.
Do not think secession is a long shot. More like it is inevitable now. There is no way to pay off this debt. Absolutely no way. So the country will collapse. No other possible path. We had a chance with austerity if the rest of the world played along, but that is now dead. No austerity possible and deficits will climb up way over a trillion in Obama's next 4 years.
You are right about the economy. It will collapse. I hope it does so quickly. If we successfully kick the can, and find ourselves in a very slow motion train wreck, then it will be like a frog in warming water. There won’t be any kind of spark that says “this country is in imminent danger”. And that path leads to the most dangerous kind of demagogue.
If it happens quickly, before demographics go too far against us, then maybe (just maybe), conservatives can convince enough people what should be obvious to everyone — that we are being ruled by economic incompetents.
Maybe you are right that secession is not that long a shot. As I said earlier, this is an untenable situation, with two halves of a country loathing each other. We will see. But I think that the key, looking forward, lies in *how* the economy collapses.