The problem is definitely with the voters. Somebody elects these people to begin with, and they don’t just spring out of thin air. It is true that a lot of them seem to get worse the longer they spend in Congress, and perhaps term limits would help somewhat. I’d say 4 terms or in other words, 8 years, would do just fine as a max for Congress critters, or perhaps even only 3 terms so they wouldn’t coincide with presidential elections too often. This would make people reevaluate their choices more often.
However, the choices as filtered through the GOP-e that controls nominations are frequently awful, such as in the case of Romney, and yet even that happens because the GOP-e knows they can get away with it since not enough people care.
I don’t even think it’s entirely about Santa Claus: it’s more about inertia, a passive attitude towards government and life, and the fact that more and more of voters are drawing on nothing but a vast pool of ignorance accumulated from nearly 50 years of completely content-free public education and social manipulation.
This is definitely true. Add to that the Hispanics we are importing and making citizens. These people have been voting socialist in Mexico for 75+ years. Of course they are going to vote the same here. This rapidly growing immigrant group is not steeped in free markets, knows nothing about what made America great, and are not terribly committed to the well being of this nation anyway. For many of them, feeding from the carcass and sending money home is enough. When things really go to hell here, they'll just go back where they came from.
But one problem I see consistently here is the screaming about the GOP "establishment". The "establishment", such that it, certainly has entrenched interests and is loathe to change, but the real problem is the voters. The people simply do not want to significantly scale back the massive social welfare state we've created. Think what passes as conservatives in places like Europe and Canada, and how they got to that point. As the state expands, the entire population tend to look at government different. You couldn't even get most conservatives to agree to ditch the socialist health systems in Europe (or Canada). Despite all its flaws, the people are now used to these systems and can't imagine life with out them. Nevermind that those socialist healthcare systems are unaffordable in the long term and provide a declining level of service as the whole thing slowly implodes. Look at any poll here, even among supposed conservatives, and you'll find precious little support for trimming back Medicare, Social Security, etc.
We have a people problem. And until we can get through to the voters, the "establishment" will never really change. You could put a Tea Party guy or gal in leadership tomorrow and they couldn't succeed because the population is just not with them on real cuts. Even Reagan couldn't really cut anything and ended up running big deficits. Yes he did the right thing, the trade-off was worth it because we had to win the Cold War - but the point is cutting much of anything is near impossible until the people are supportive of politicians that actually do it. Unfortunately in a democratic system voters tend to vote for what they want, not what they need.