Republicans and taxes: winning the battle, losing the war.

From one of my favorite economists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/economy/antitax-ideas-could-have-unintended-results.html?_r=1

I've said this before:  the problem with the sort of scorched-earth policy that the GOP has been operating with is that in absence of reform, big government wins by default.  The current crop of GOP leaders took power and could have cut all sorts of deals to drastically reduce the size of the government.  They've taken advantage of precisely zero of those opportunities (its already obvious that the debt ceiling deal won't result in any actual spending cuts).