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a true constitutionalist conservative is what the country desperately needs if there is going to be even the remotest chance of stopping the country's slide into economic, social and political ruin.

I disagree. Sort of.

Let's assume we, by some fluke, were to elect the most constitutionalist conservative imaginable as President.

Would that save the country?

Nope. The country is in the mess it's in not because of the politicians. They have just been giving the people what they want.

A politician who actually ran on the platform of doing what needs to be done would never even make it thru a single primary, much less get elected.

The problem is extremely simple, and equally intractable.

It is, pretty clearly, the expansion of government and the associated spending this requires.

Most Americans, probably, would like to see government reduced in scope and spendingg.

But that is a generalized POV. Meanwhile, special interest groups feeding off the government have very specialized and intense desire for continuation and expansion of their own special programs.

So whenever a politician faces the specifics of cutting spending, he has a vague generalized desire for reduced spending by the public on one side, and intense focused opposition to any specific cut on the other side.

Intense focus will always beat vague generalizations. Nobody is intensely desirous that any particular program be cut, while every such program has its intense partisans.

Result: lots of talk about cutting, no cutting in practice.

I think a case could be made that this is the result of too much democracy, of the politicians paying too much heed to what the people tell them they want. Arguably, what we need is politicians who can do what needs to be done whether the people want it at the time or not. IOW, less "democracy," not more.

BTW, if you break a leg, you can't walk for a while. If your leg is amputated, you'll never walk again. On a real leg, anyway.

What can I say? You're right. However, in my defense, I did say "even the remotest chance of stopping the country's slide". I know electing the right President won't be enough on its own. We need to change the culture, in particular the culture of entitlement. The diagnosis is simple, the solution incredibly difficult, for all the reasons you give.

BTW. A broken leg doesn't heal if you are forced to keep on hobbling on it, and in matters of national survival the race never stops.

"The country is in the mess it's in not because of the politicians. They have just been giving the people what they want."

The truth hurts. Policy under Romney would not be radically different from Obama due to the unwashed masses demand for bread and circuses. The only reason for a conservative, based on principle, to vote for Romney is to remove Obama because of his unconstitutional power grabs. I fear the only way the nation returns to a true constitutional representative republic is to go through near total economic collapse and pray for a benign, short lived military directorship. A quixotic notion perhaps, but hardship and suffering is the only way the nation's character can be rebuilt to what it was.