Replies

(1) Obama is not willing to make real, substantial, painful spending cuts.
(2) Our fiscal problem is a result of over-spending not under-taxing.
(3) The federal government cannot spend a dime without the approval of the Republican-majority House of Representatives.
(4) There is no fiscal “cliff” in the sense that anything earth-shattering will happen when the ball drops and the new year begins (taxes and spending are frequently changed retroactively and that can happen months into the new year).
(5) Conservatives have in the past fallen for deals involving promised spending cuts that never materialized.
(6) The sequestration caused by over the cliff is not all that radical, except to the Beltway crowd. But it would make a real dent in spending and would only reduce defense spending to 2006 levels (in real dollars, i.e., adjusted for inflation since then).
(7) It is bad for the Bush tax rates to expire across the board but if we aren’t willing to see that happen, we will never achieve real meaningful spending cuts.
(8) Negotiating on your back foot, telegraphing that you must reach a deal at all costs and cannot conceive of walking away from the table is a no way to negotiate - anyone who has ever done a serious negotiation of any kind knows that.

Putting this all together:
(1) We need a new Speaker.
(2) We need to go over the Cliff.
(3) After going over the Cliff, we need the House to only approve spending that it deems appropriate and if that leads Obama to shut the government down, as it surely would, then so be it.