If a Republican president can’t address a Republican-controlled Congress without paying lip service to the idea of cutting spending, what good are Republicans?

Glenn Reynolds has a good answer. 

Okay, a few points, starting with the fact that I actually do care about the debt.

But the demise of the Tea Party movement showed that nobody much in DC cares, in either party. “Lip service” is the most we’ve ever gotten, and not even that when there was even a hint of danger that it might actually be taken seriously.

I think that we simply can’t address the debt, barring an immediate crisis too big to finagle our way out of it, under our current political arrangements. I think Trump may be helpful here not because he cares about the debt — he doesn’t, or, if he does, he realizes that there’s nothing that can be done under existing political arrangements — but because he offers some hope of disrupting current political arrangements. Until those arrangements are disrupted, or the bottom drops out of U.S finances, nothing much can be done.

Alternative take: In 2012 with Mitt Romney, America had a chance at a turnaround artist, and it passed. In 2016, we elected Trump. And his expertise is different.

First we have to change the culture in Washington.