First, conservative 'reporter' Carolyn Lochhead, of the SF Chronicle's Washington bureau, writes
Deficit cracking GOP's solidarity
Party-line votes no longer assured
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/27/MNGKPFUQ871.DTL&hw=deficit+cracking+gop+solidarity&sn=001&sc=1000contains this :
""It's only a matter of time before we stop talking about cutting taxes for a very long period of time and talk basically about increasing taxes," Bartlett predicted. "The end of the era of tax cutting is going to put tremendous strain on the Republican coalition, just as the end of the era of big spending put tremendous strain on the Democratic coalition" in the 1980s. "You're hearing more and more people on the Republican side talking about major losses in the congressional elections next year and about 2008 being a really, really bad year for Republicans.""
and another article, by David Lazarus SF Chron's business columnist,
Nation's spending out of line
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/27/BUGGNFSQFE1.DTL&hw=nation+spending+out+of+line&sn=001&sc=1000says this :
"Brian Riedl, chief budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Bush administration is expected to return to Congress within the next few months to ask lawmakers -- once again -- to raise the nation's debt ceiling so we can borrow even more.
"A debt of $8 trillion is certainly a daunting number," Riedl told me. "I'm not sure we'll ever pay it off."
You heard right. The top number cruncher at the Washington think tank that's arguably friendliest to the Bush administration has come to the conclusion that our debt has gotten so out of hand, it may never go away."
So, you can see that on fiscal policy alone, Republicans should not even bother running in '06.