to having some modicrum of sanity.

That is not true. Entitlements are money, which goes back into the economy. Wars and Tax cuts for the Wealthy, does not go back into the economy. Like Buffet claims, they have been hiding it under their mattresses or stashing it off shore for their siblings inheritance. The middle class and Poor are not responsible for the Debt period.

What the Republicans have done, is snuckered some people and Democrats into thinking that. Now the smart people need to call them out. The middle class and Poor are not holding on to any money. So the smart people are telling the President to go off the cliff, and let the Republicans and their allies kick and scream about it. And if any of your so call advisors say different, fire the son of gun! We elected you and not them! They can be replaced but you can't replace us. We gave you the power, use it!

he is just as Conservative as he ever was. But he is an honest Conservative, of the "if it ain't broke don't fix it kind". He has not entered the altered state of reality that the rest of the party has, especially since the coming of the tea-baggers. The current Republican party isn't Conservative at all, it is Radically Reactionary, they betray all of the core principals of true Conservatism which Bartlett takes very seriously. This is the kind of Conservative who used to make up much of the Republican Base. The modern Republican party has expelled them as well as the moderate Rockefeller Republican's that dominated the Northeast for nearly 100 years. Those two groups were the real intellectual base of Conservatism. They created Movement Conservatism only to lose control of it to the Reactionary Fundamentalist Chistian's (Goldwater has some prescience on that unholy alliance) and then with the knuckle dragger's of the Tea Party. There is nothing Conservative being promulgated by today's Republican Party, their agenda is pure Radical Reactionary.