Commentary by Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan: the man Conservatives love to hate and hate to love.

Frequently he can be all over the proverbial grid.

Here, he makes a bit of initial sense:

"I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one," said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.

"These days, I wonder if this country is even governable."

Quoted in the New York Times' lead story, "Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis," Hoagland nailed it.

America faces a crisis of democracy.

At its heart is a fiscal crisis [my emphasis]. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight.

You are being quite kind, Mr Buchanan. Obama is, to me, clearly on his way to a one-term presidency. Has anyone noticed that I have never written these two words together: "president" and "Obama"? They are, to my way of thinking, mutually exclusive.

Buchanan continues:

Long before 2016, however, holders of U.S. public debt will stop buying Treasury bills or start demanding higher interest rates to cover the growing risk of a default.

This week, a smoke detector went off. China

, in December, had unloaded $45 billion of its $790 billion in T-bills. Is Beijing bailing out?

To assure the world we are not Greece writ large, the United States must soon adopt a visible plan for slashing the deficit.

There are three ways to do it. One is through growth that increases the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury and reduces the outflow for safety-net programs like unemployment insurance.

But growth only comes slowly and can take us only so far.

Wait for it -- wait for it; Here it comes:

Needed is a combination of big budget cuts and tax hikes. But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class.

And here is where Barack Obama hits the wall.

And here is where Mr Buchanan and I part company -- as will, I suspect, the bulk of you, my dearest readers.

Tax hikes?

Are you serious, Mr Buchanan? Tax hikes on a federal level?

In a Recession? Bordering on inflation and then hyper-inflation? On the cusp of an actual Depression?

Get set, Americans. To Mr Buchanan you are now Reds:

Republicans are not going to give him a single vote for a tax increase. Not only would this violate a commitment most made to the people who elected them, it would be politically suicidal. For behind the GOP today, and its best hope of recapturing Congress in 2010, are the tea-party irregulars.

And tea partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars [my emphasis] who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again.

As well they should not!

Consider: Arlen Specter voted for the Obama stimulus and faced an immediate primary challenge from Pat Toomey, who took a 20-point lead, forcing Specter to quit the party to survive. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist embraced Obama on a Florida visit and got an immediate primary challenge from Marco Rubio, who now looks to be the next senator from Florida.

The tea-party folks are not into the Gerald Ford politics of compromise and consensus. They have seen what it produces: the inexorable growth of government.

And, on the other hand, we have seen what tax cuts may yield under someone as politically insane and daft as Ronald Wilson Reagan.

One thing Mr Buchanan now properly offers:

Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet – no new tax revenue to batten on – so be it. Cold turkey time.

Anticipating gains in November, Republicans will not give Obama any new taxes before then. After November, their ranks swollen by tea-party support, they will be even more intractable.

Where does that leave Obama – and us?

Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.

Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.

And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.

And in response to the so-called "maelstrom"?

I say: bring it on.

Nothing would make me happier than a federal government in turmoil and stagnation. But moreover: NOT SPENDING.

Patrick J. Buchanan: you are a complete tool, sir.

BZ