[americanophile]

I quite agree, but succeeding in politics is strategic. We the conservatives have a golden opportunity to now elect our own in 2012; that's when and where, if victorious, we can be uncompromising - that's when we rollback the programs that are destroying us. To fight to the death on a legislative deal that has no prospect of either succeeding, or solving the long term debt problem, but contains mountains of political risk is simply electoral suicide.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You are right, of course. But we are all sick of the non-stop ratchet toward totalitarianism that has been going on for 100 years. I hope 2012 is the watershed we think it may be. If it isn’t and the Tea Party faction doesn’t gain the upper hand, we are finished. We have reached the last tooth on the ratchet.

[SuziQ]

Well said. The only way we conservatives can get the results we want is to get conservatives elected to Congress so that we have the votes. Just sitting and sniping at the folks who are there now, who voted for the best of the sorry alternatives, will get us nowhere. If those folk were in greater numbers, they might have been able to forge a better plan. Let’s get those numbers up so that in the future they will be the authors of much better legislation.