This is the core of the Conservative dilemma and the hope of the Progressive Socialists.
Two of the core principles of Conservatives is limited government and personal responsibility, principles embraced by an ever diminishing percentage of the American electorate. Progressives on the other hand are all about expanding the governments role by expanding entitlements, making government largess available to an ever increasing percentage of the electorate and paid for by the aforementioned “diminishing percentage” and imposing government involvement and control over an ever expanding public sector; replacing personal with government responsibility. The rationale is or should be, obvious and deceptively simple; create an electorate overwhelmingly in the Progressive political camp; add amnesty to entitlement expansion, the holy Grail of the Left that in one fell swoop creates the one party system.
This is why some Conservative pundits are hoping that election 2010 will not result in the Republicans taking control. They fear that, if in the majority of both Houses, any success in reversing the massive expansion of government and any meaningful reductions in government spending, while pleasing their ever diminishing base will inevitably result in a massive political backlash in 2012 from that growing segment of the voting public, now irreversibly dependent on entitlements, that will necessarily be targets for significant revisions all directed at what will be described as Draconian cuts in “essential” programs and services.
The Left has successfully executed this strategy over a decades long engagement in class warfare that has dragged both Democrats and Republicans increasingly towards the left as they brazenly pandered to inherent human weakness. It might be said that America is now reaping the rewards of it’s self imposed cultural decline.
