Megan McArdle writes,

If the GOP doesn’t cut a deal sometime pretty soon, we’re either going to default on our debt (hello, financial crisis, unemployment spike, substantial and immediate drop in GDP, followed by an angry mob of voters descending on their polling places with pitchforks), or we’re going to cut a bunch of programs that beneficiaries are very attached to. (Hello, angry mob of seniors descending on their representatives with machetes.) There is no deal that they can cut which does not include raising more revenue; the Democrats aren’t going to be the only people offering compromise, and I don’t blame them.

She agrees with David Brooks. A couple of months ago, I called this the Alternate Universe Problem.

If I were making Republican strategy, I would be trying to get a Simpson-Bowles package. My thinking is that if the Republicans want deeper spending cuts than that, then they have to win some more elections.