Tom Friedman: The Grand Bargain & 'I wish President Obama had embraced the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan when it was announced last November.'

Tom Friedman writes in The New York Times:

Despite having run on the promise of “Read my lips: No new taxes,” when the deficit started spiraling to dangerous levels under his presidency, [George H.W.] Bush agreed to a compromise with Democrats to raise several taxes, along with spending cuts, as part of a 1990 budget deal that helped to pave the way for the prosperity of that decade. It definitely hurt his re-election, but he did it anyway.

On the economy, the G.O.P. has gone from the magical thinking of Vice President Dick Cheney — who argued that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” and used this argument to help run up the deficit to its current astronomical levels with huge tax cuts — to an anti-tax cult that spurned a “Grand Bargain” with President Obama because it would have not only cut $3 trillion in spending over the next decade but also involved $1 trillion in tax increases. Somehow, the G.O.P. has forgotten that even Ronald Reagan didn’t believe deficits don’t matter and he raised taxes when our fiscal stability demanded it. As for prudence today, well, the willingness to risk a default on America’s financial obligations by refusing to raise the debt ceiling may be many things, but it is not prudent.

Where have all the adults in this party gone? Where is Dick Lugar, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Colin Powell, Hank Paulson and Big Business? Are you telling me that they are ready to fall in line behind Michele Bachmann, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin? Are these really the pacesetters of modern conservatism?

I wish President Obama had embraced the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan when it was announced last November and then added his own long-term investment plans on top of it and then built a national mandate for this “Grand Bargain” — before we got to this point. But the president has now embraced such a deal, which is important and constructive, though he needs to spell out this Grand Bargain more emphatically, publicly, repeatedly and specifically.

Because it is the only long-term solution — and it is coming. Either the market will impose a Grand Bargain on us in a haphazard way or we can do it rationally by a Democratic and Republican consensus. The president says that he is ready and that his party is behind him. I hope so. But without a Republican Party that returns to the sane conservatism of the likes of George H.W. Bush — which accepts that both spending and tax increases are, reluctantly, needed to fix our budget and maintain social stability — we’re not going to get even a minibargain, let alone a grand one. It is time for a counterrevolution in the G.O.P.