“He’ll cut these things and pretend shock when Republicans hint that perhaps other areas ought to be considered.”
Repubs may hint but what will they really say needs to be cut? I remember going through this when Reagan was president. He was going to enact massive spending cuts, but in the end, everybody chickened out. The Repubs were as much defenders of big government as the Dems, refusing to call for significant cuts to Social Security, or Medicare. Reagan proposed significant cuts in his own cabinet departments, where he had complete control of the budget, but one by one his cabinet appointees came by and explained why their particular department was the one whose budget could not be cut, and in fact, should be increased. In the end, even those small cuts failed to come to fruition.
It’s going to take a special kind of real conservative who will be willing to face the electorate and tell them that the party is over, nothing more for free. We have to pay for what we get. And that includes paying for wars as well. If we want lower taxes, we have to have lower spending. The thing is, all these groups that receive the freebies will be out to ruin the true conservative: the Social Security retirees, the Medicare recipients, the retired military, the farmers,...the list goes on and on. At this point, it’s virtual political suicide to actually recommend the cuts that it would take to balance the budget. So everyone is in favor of it, but no politician will say how to do it.
So there will be war. And with a tremendous amount of luck, we may be able to rebuild a society, based on the old principles, which is put in place without having to worry about filibustering.
I'm not at all optimistic.