Why are there no specifics in the current dialog about what the Republicans would cut from government (in addition to cutting taxes) in order to cut the deficit? The following occurred to me as so obvious that I have wondered why I haven't seen it mentioned in the political discourse I follow either on the net or on TV: (1) The Republicans have only one OVERT rallying cry which has been in any way politically effective for them: Cut Taxes; so, if they abandon that to any degree, they have absolutely nothing. (2) Companion to that: The obvious concomitant is that cutting taxes will cut government, so it won't do all the things intended to benefit any likely scapegoat group against which the Republican base can be COVERTLY rallied (e.g., ethnic minorities, intellectuals [i.e., any new ideas, regardless of merit], etc.). (3) But, since the truth is that the actual functions of government actually benefit the Republican base as much or more than anyone else, if the Republicans were to say anything at all about what they are actually thinking of cutting, the whole country, including their base, would be up in arms against them, because there is actually nothing they could propose cutting that would not negatively effect key members of their own constituencies (along with whomever else they would negatively effect, probably the rest of us). So, since cutting taxes has finally reached the point at which nobody actually believes that would mean anything even remotely positive anymore, the Republicans in fact can no longer say anything specific that won't hurt them politically; and so all they in fact are saying these days is meaningless cant, meaningless, contentless cliche's with only "dog whistle" relevance, which they have endlessly repeated now for decades or longer.
Finally, I think they do have hope, however, for the future; and that would be to, as quickly as possible, jettison the racism which has alienated all the ethnic minorities and play as hard as possible on all the medieval conservative, atavistic or anachronistic, "moral", prejudices and/or resentments (many of which may not have seen the light in the mainstream media for quite a while) that they can find (or drum up) in the religious and other conservative groups to which many in the ethnic minority communities belong. I would think, based on past performance, that the Republicans would be very good at finding enough of such triggers to create a string of electoral victories.
It has been very interesting to me to see the overcoming of this strategy by the various groups that have been targeted by similar Republican strategies since Lee Atwater; but that doesn't mean that new such scapegoat groups or groupings cannot be invented by the Republicans to take their place.