Since the New Deal and the construction of the entitlement leviathan, conservatives have occasionally lamented that even when they control the branches of government they have been little more than "tax collectors for the welfare state."
That paradigm might soon be shifting -- shifting because the aforementioned leviathan is soon to collapse. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have trillions in unfunded liabilities within the near future, and no amount of taxation or "Quantitative Easing" will be able to make up that difference without first destroying the economy. We are witnessing as much right now in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. France is not far behind.
Having promised the free provision of everything, the reckoning has come.
The American Left has refused to face this reality (just as the European Left did), but all too soon it will be all too real.
On that day, assuming the Democratic Party is still in power, the condition will modulate from Republicans being the tax collectors for the welfare state to Democrats being the imposers of austerity.
History delights in irony.
