After Super Tuesday: Wait Until 2009!

Our Democratic friends are racing towards the nomination in a dead heat. They are all excited about change. They are setting high expectations for their supporters.

Sad-eyed Republicans look like they are going to be led by Senator John McCain. He has made his national reputation by working with Democrats on Democrat-style legislation and frustrating the Republican agenda.

So it certainly looks like the Democrats must be prohibitive favorites to win in November. What would that mean?

It’s time to remember Irving Kristol’s words back in the 1980s. The Republicans, he wrote, should cut taxes to the bone and give the government back to the Democrats when Uncle Sam is broke.

That, of course, is exactly what happened in 1992. Bill Clinton was elected in a wave of enthusiasm and a promised middle-class tax cut.

Then we all came down to earth. In 1993, remember, newly elected Bill Clinton told us how that promised middle-class tax cut had gone up in smoke. "I never worked harder on anything my whole life than I did that middle class tax cut," he told us as he raised taxes.

In the end he pushed a $500 billion tax increase through Congress without a single Republican vote, and lost the House and Senate in 1994.

If you look at Bush’s budget numbers in the 2009 budget, you will see that he is handing the next president a live grenade. He has cranked up defense spending enormously. He has made almost no progress in reducing any other spending. See usgovernmentspending.com for details.

So is the next Democratic president is going to dare to get soft on the War on Terror? Or raise taxes? Or cut the Democrats’ beloved social spending? Or renege on universal health coverage?

Clinton and Obama are telling their supporters that the tough choices and arguments of the past eight years will be swept away in a vast tide of change.

Not really. President Bush has served up all the tough choices in the upcoming budget so that they will all land with a thump in the president’s in-tray next January 20.

Which means that we conservatives will have the Democrats just where we want them.