What’s a Republican to do but Bask in Barack Obama’s Glow of Greatness?

Sister Toldjah has an idea:  Why not stand up for some traditional conservative values, you know, like they mean something.

Republicans have known for several months that they’d be facing Barack Obama as president and a Democratic majority in Congress.  But knowing their opponent hasn’t translated into a strategy for dealing with Mr. Obama’s enormous – and, in all probability, temporary – popularity.

I understand that taking a fiscally responsible stance will be tough after the Bush years’ budgetary irresponsibility.  But I would suggest that Republicans need to play a quick game of pin-the-tail-on-the-designated-scapegoat and get back Phil Gramm-style defending of the federal budget ASAP.

That means before the Democrats’ bloated stimulus package, which Michelle Malkin correctly identifies as the Generational Theft Act, is rammed through Congress.  Currently weighing in at a corpulent $1.1T, this one bill would add an estimated 9% onto a massive national debt that is already beyond our ability to pay back while levying any sort of reasonable tax rate on American workers.

Whilst trying to figure out who they are, Republicans would do well to consider that the U.S. debt problem became geometrically worse under the Reagan and Bush administrations.  This is not just a Democratic problem; however, only Republicans have the history and the constituency to make fiscal restraint in Washington a possibility, however remote.

Perhaps the most unpleasant part of the message that needs to be put forth is that the current generation of Americans must reduce their expectations of what the government is going to be able to do for them financially.  It’s both craven and irresponsible for Baby Boomers to consume the economic resources of this country to the extent that today’s children will toil their entire lives under the weight of the Boomers’ self-indulgence.