I am sick and tired of hearing how "spineless" the republicans are.

You show me a republican who is looking at a conservative, and I'll show you a republican ready for war.

We all remember how bad the republicans treated the Tea Party. Separately, I also remember John McCain going after Bill Cunningham at HIS OWN CAMPAIGN RALLY. There are no spineless republicans. They all(save 20 or 30 of them) hate conservatives.

The GOP has opposed Conservatives since the Movement began. Yet, it has been only when Conservatives preponderated that the party has experienced success. Trump has moved beyond that alignment. He is no Conservative yet holds many of their principles. As to the budget deficit and debt, that is indeed a matter for the Congress and the blame lies with them for the last 50 years. The current administration proposed a budget showing cuts to several agency budgets. Those were refused by the Congress and the agencies got their standard percentage increases instead. How did your Representative and Senators vote? Hold them accountable. This situation must end.

I have a suggestion for managing the budget deficit that might encourage active participation by anyone who wants to gain a tangible stake in the future wellbeing of America.
Why not issue America Bonds to fund necessary but costly projects like infrastructure?

It won't stop until we organize a convention of states to impose term limits. If we can last that long.

There I'll disagree with you. There won't be a convention of states to do this or that or anything else. Things will continue as they are until they can't and then those left holding the bag when the bill finally comes due. Well they'll have to pick up the pieces of what's left. It is just simple human nature to keep the good times rolling. We are all playing a gigantic game of musical chairs and brother you don't want to be without a chair when the music finally stops on this one.

I agree it will not happen, but that is what is required. My own Republican lifetime senator loves social programs.

"Term limits" is a Will-o'-the-Wisp.

What is the difference between one John McCain who serves 6 terms, and six John McCains who serve one term each consecutively? Take a look................. Who did the republicans give us as a replacement for McCain? Sally McMartha. She is just as worthless as he was.

One down, five more mccains to go!

The answer to our problems isn't term limits. We need to resume protesting. We only protested for like a year and 1/2 to 2 years and then gave up. That is not enough time. Had we kept doing it for 5, 10, or more years it would have worked.

Mark Levin? Is that you?

This has to be job number one for Trump after he gets re-elected. No way politically he can take on the rinos and dems at this point without risking a loss.
And he'll need people like Mr. Tucker, who wrote this piece, to make the case for Mr. Trump to present in the 2021 State of the Union, which is the most appropriate venue.
Dems will shriek and gnash their teeth, and Trump can lean, heavily, on the rinos. But, he has to find a way to articulate so that even the dimmest New York
Times reader will be educated on the dire consequences. All before the 2022 election, should the America haters retake the House, as in 2018.

Why don't we start by electing Garland Tucker as senator of North Carolina, a state which has been betrayed by both of their senators with their anti-Trump behaviors. The people of North Carolina and especially the state's Republicans voted for Trump, but that didn't stop Richard Burr from allowing Mark Warner of Virginia, who was second to Burr's chairmanship on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to go after the President. Nor did pro-Trump voters of North Carolina stop Thom Tillis from trying to undermine Trump in legislation and trying to put forth a bill to prevent the President from ever ending the Mueller fake Russia investigation. Mr. Tucker, make yourself known to all North Carolinians and win this race!!

Trump has no chance of reelection.

100 million idiots did not vote in 2016 because “Trump had no chance of winning.”

2020 won’t be like that.

Every Democrat voter is awake and ready. 2020 voter turnout will be the highest since WWII. All those morons in Miami and Jacksonville and Detroit and Philadelphia will finally wake up.

Nov. 3, 2020 cannot get here soon enough.

Yeah, they'll finally get "woke" (stupid term, of course), and go to the courthouse and mutter "Where's them honkey weffare checks?"

Calling his own voters morons sure reveals what Leftists think of their own voters not to mention all the deplorables. Talk about self righteous egos.

None of these people “my voters.”

They are simply Americans who were given the opportunity to prevent an immoral goon named Trump from becoming President and failed miserably at it.

.

Many conservatives in the silent majority who also didn't vote may be turning out as well. You can play games and make groundless predictions, but it would be wiser to wait at least until after the primaries.

.

The frustration you feel, stems from unwillingness to face reality. Your legislators know the sad truth, which is that the reward for the party that tightens the purse strings, will be to sit on the sidelines after the next election, while your opponents dispense the dosh.
Fiscal probity is very much a male concern, and thanks to the 19th amendment, very much a minority concern.

Tucker catalogs what is happening but doesn't explain what isn't happening:

1. Interest rates aren’t rising
2. Inflation is extremely low
3. No reduction in private investment

Until those can be explained, no-one is going to care about deficits and the ever rising debt.

Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, Not A Newspaper!

Let's cut the military budget 85 to 90%. Big savings. Serves no useful purpose. Invest in infrastructure

Europe spends much less on defense. Does this mean that they enjoy balanced budgets and modest public debt? Far from it.

.

I agree with you that military spending has gone overboard. Let's cut it by the same percent that we cut all spending. Infrastructure is more of a state responsibility and the Constitution explicitly calls for military readiness. Maybe a 5% cut across the board. The worst offenders are entitlement transfers, and they must be cut, too.

.

You mean the systems that citizen are forced to pay into so that if they live long enough they can get something back, like Social Security or Medicare? How is it an Entitlement if I already paid for it with my money? What kind of pretzel logic are you using? No entitlements are not the problem. Military spending to buy garbage is a problem. Profits on National Defence are a problem and so is making a profit on someone's misery and outright theft by of a whole life insurance policy called Social Security.

.

I agree with you about Social Security being a rip-off. If you could stop looking for conflict, you might find that we may not be far apart.

We should have the option to privatize our retirement savings. An S&P index fund would pay a lot more than SS. But then they couldn't take some of your contributions and subsidize people who didn't pay in, or who take out fabulously more than they paid in. I don't begrudge SS recipients getting benefits. I do think that all spending needs to take a cut, and that includes the entitlements. And like it or not, SS is an entitlement. Just because you paid into the system for years doesn't mean you're getting your own money back. You might get more, and you might get less. That's how redistribution works.

Military spending is due for cuts as well, but don't fool yourself into thinking that it is the big debt driver. It isn't taking substantially more of our collective GDP in recent years, and in fact, it takes a much smaller percent of federal taxes than it did throughout the 20th Century. I don't like adventurism and I don't think we should be the world's cop, but we should be ready for war. That said, we could get by on less military spending if we changed our military posture and our mindset that we're in charge of the world.

.

Trump and Republicans are financially incompetent.

Reagan tax cuts. Bush tax cuts. Trump tax cuts.

It’s always the same.

Republicans give billionaires tax cuts. The economy tanks. Americans elect Democrats to come clean up the disaster made by Republicans. Americans forget how careless Republicans are managing the country’s finances and a few years later we elect an imbecile like “Mr 6 bankruptcies.” And the process repeats.

It’s time to put the adults back in charge.

Elect democrats.

The down arrow button doesn't work any more, so I hereby give you a thousand of them. Democrats want to meddle in your private life, and that is completely unacceptable. However much the Repubs mess up, they are Madison himself compared to Democrats. Republicans are bad, all right, Troll, but Democrats are far, far worse, no matter what. You and yours will never be acceptable to me, and those like me. So shut up, get lost, go back to your room and envy your life away, loser.

Here's a cure...

Use the downvote, people.

There are add-ons for Firefox and Chrome and Chrome-based browsers that allow you to view the downvote counts.

Here for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/...

and here for Chrome and Chrome-based (Vivaldi and Opera, as well as others):

https://chrome.google.com/w...

When you downvote a comment, the downvote arrow will turn red.

The next time you look at that comment, your vote will be part of the total displayed.

It clearly illustrates the level of contempt for that particular comment.

Waltzin Matilda

Thanks. I used to use it before they disabled it. It would be interesting to see how many the trolls get. I've gotten plenty myself, once upon a time.

The add-ons work.

Waltzin Matilda

Two words: Chicago, Illinois.

I’ll see your Chicago and offer up:
Mississippi
Arkansas
West Virginia
Oklahoma
Louisiana
Alabama
Kentucky

All of these Republican-led, high obesity, lowly educated states have life expectancies lower the average life expectancies of Mexico, China, Iran, Cuba and multiple countries in Africa.

Republicans have the unique ability to turn entire states into 3rd world living.

Republicans are utterly incompetent with our national debt and numerous other public responsibilities.

.

First of all, the economy hasn't tanked. It didn't tank after any of those tax cuts, or after the Kennedy ones, either. In fact, it always grew and brought in more tax revenue.

Second, billionaires get the biggest tax cuts because they have the biggest tax bills. Pretty straightforward, but a talking point for those who want to redistribute other people's earnings.

Third, the halfway-sensible Democrats running for president can't even make the next debate, and the Democrat nominee will be a collectivist advocating the Green New Deal and free college and a full government takeover of health care and free care for illegals.

.