Frum anticipates some hard decisions:
The political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as a contest over “who gets what, when, and how.” Over the next dozen years, as the gap between the revenue lines and the expenditure lines of the federal and state governments widen, that definition could aptly be amended: Who gets disappointed—and by how much? Will baby boomers receive a less generous deal from Medicare than their parents did? Will the huge promises to public-sector retirees be honored? Or will other programs for younger people be squeezed? Will we sacrifice America’s military presence in the world? Or will we exact more in taxes—and if so, what kind of taxes, and imposed on whom?
The choice for Republicans comes down to their limited government ideology and their older voting base:
If they choose their ideology, they will need to locate some new voters in upper-income America. They will need to draw back to the Grand Old Party the kind of voters who defected to Barack Obama in 2008: affluent professionals, especially women, in major urban centers. This was the kind of Republicanism practiced in the 1990s by governors like Christine Todd Whitman, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, and George Pataki. Such a Republicanism would not need to jettison its pro-life message, just de-emphasize it, as Democrats have, for example, de-emphasized their message on gun control.
The Dish 