You already saw this logo if you read The Daily Pulse at
My Left Wing

But it really got me to thinking. For years we have attacked Republicans on OUR issues, trying to persuade THEM that WE are right. Perhaps a better plan of attack might to be seek out their point of vulnerability, and attack there.
I really believe the logo above can be the jumping-off point for an entire campaign aimed at the socially moderate fiscal conservative. How?
By just pointing to the clock.
Today's Republican voters seem to be an unholy alliance of fiscal conservatives and religious fundamentalists. We will never get the latter without selling our souls. But can we drive a wedge, start to make the former think maybe they are not getting what they pay for with their votes and their contributions? Maybe we can't change them, but can we make them question their own deal with the devil? Can we drive them to demand for fiscal sanity and less religious insanity? I think so.
Under Bill Clinton, the National Debt Clock started running backwards. Reagan's fiscal insanity of his first term was replaced by a modicum of rationality in his second. Bush I lost his base because he refused to cut taxes in the face of deficits, and Clinton (and, I do admit, the bubble economy) finally reversed the trend.
CNN
September 7, 2000
The plug was pulled on the National Debt Clock, which has kept track of the federal government's red ink since the electronic billboard near Times Square was erected in 1989.
In its final moments Thursday, the sign read: "Our national debt: $5,676,989,904,887. Your family share: $73,733." ...
When it first was plugged in, the odometer-style clock whirred furiously as the national debt rose by $13,000 a second. Often the last few digits increased so fast they were just a blur. And at one point in the mid-1990s, the debt was rising so fast the clock's computer crashed.
But the clock, which calculated the second-by-second increase in the debt based on data from the U.S. Treasury, began doing a strange thing this year.
Rather than cranking higher, it started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second at last count, with a newly frugal Washington to thank.
Much to the bewilderment of passers-by, the clock began ticking down shortly after the government -- flush with surplus funds from America's decade-long economic boom -- announced in August 1999 it would start paying off its debts.
The government has paid off roughly $100 billion of the national debt so far this year. ...
Things were going so well by the end of Clinton's term that, not only were we not accumulating additional debt, we were actually paying some of it off.
CNN
September 27, 2000
President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.
"Eight years ago, our future was at risk," Clinton said Wednesday morning. "Economic growth was low, unemployment was high, interest rates were high, the federal debt had quadrupled in the previous 12 years. When Vice President Gore and I took office, the budget deficit was $290 billion, and it was projected this year the budget deficit would be $455 billion." ...
Instead, the president explained, the $5.7 trillion national debt has been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years -- $223 billion this year alone.
This represents, Clinton said, "the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States." ...
It is the third year in a row the federal government has taken in more than it spent, and has paid down the debt. The last time the U.S. government had a third consecutive year of national debt reduction was 1949, said the official.
The federal budget surplus for fiscal year 1999 was $122.7 billion, and $69.2 billion for fiscal year 1998. Those back-to-back surpluses, the first since 1957, allowed the Treasury to pay down $138 billion in national debt.
Then came Bush. But what is really interesting for the purpose of the thesis of this diary is the response of fiscal conservatives to Bush's budget explosion, including Frist's office.
CBS
Dec. 17, 2003
President Bush's goal of cutting in half a projected $500 billion federal deficit within five years is being dismissed as too timid by conservatives, unachievable by analysts and laughable by Democrats.
Mr. Bush will include the objective in the $2.3 trillion budget for 2005 he sends Congress in February, nine months away from the presidential and congressional elections. The goal is backed by many Republicans, but conservatives want a bolder move against the record deficits and big spending increases the administration has run up.
"It's a rather anemic goal, actually," said Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth. "We should be talking about how to balance the budget." ...
The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was $374 billion, the highest ever in dollar terms. Administration officials say the more important measure is how the shortfall compares with the size of the economy, with last year's 3.5 percent share far below the 6 percent post-World War II peak of 1983. ...
... Congress since August has enacted a Medicare expansion creating prescription drug coverage and improvements in veterans' benefits projected to add a combined $53 billion to the deficit in 2009.
Other costly proposals in the works include Mr. Bush's plan to extend expiring tax cuts; a revision of the alternative minimum tax to prevent middle-income earners from paying it; and energy legislation that has already passed the House.
If, along with those items, spending controlled by Congress grows at the average 7.7 percent annual rate seen since 1998, the resulting 2009 deficit would be $666 billion, G. William Hoagland, budget aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., warned senators in a recent memo. ...
Lawmakers have shown little taste for such a small increase. If they did -- and that would mean no unforeseen expenses like new wars it would still require $182 billion in 2009 savings. ...
And now, not only is debt mounting, it is repeatedly exploding through the debt ceiling. America under Bush is a crack whore with a credit card company that keeps raising the limit and pumping up interest and penalties. Republicans know it, and they know if it becomes the discussion, they are vulnerable. Why do you think they want to talk about evolution, Terri Schiavo, and the morning after pill?
Boston Globe
November 18, 2004
A divided Senate approved an $800 billion increase in the federal debt limit yesterday, a major boost in borrowing that Senator John Kerry and other Democrats blamed on the fiscal policies of President Bush.
The 52-44 vote, mostly along party lines, was expected to be followed by House passage today. Enactment would raise the government's borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion -- more than eight times the total federal debt that existed when President Reagan took office in 1981. ...
Republican senators did not join in the debate, underscoring how politically uncomfortable the measure is for them. They had refused to bring the bill to a vote before the elections. ...
And it just keeps getting worse, for the country, and for the Republicans. How vulnerable are they if this is the conversation? They almost all voted AGAINST fiscal sanity.
Bloomberg
April 4, 2005
The tightly disciplined, Republican- controlled Congress that gave President George W. Bush key pro- business victories in the first few months of his second term may now put political survival ahead of party unity. ...
These ``were easy wins that were left over from the last Congress,'' says Ethan Siegal, president of the Washington Exchange, which tracks policy for institutional investors.
``Everything else Bush has on the table is very difficult, and the discipline in his party is breaking apart.''
The first stirrings of dissent were heard when lawmakers took up Bush's 2006 budget, which calls for trimming federal benefits and other domestic programs while extending portions of his first-term tax cuts. ...
Some Republicans share Wall Street's concern over the effect of the proposal on the budget deficit, which reached a record $412 billion last year. Any plan to create the accounts would add $1 trillion to $2 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ...
During last month's Senate debate on Bush's request to extend his $1.85 trillion in tax cuts, only five Republican senators joined the chamber's 44 Democrats and one independent to demand that further reductions be offset by tax increases or spending cuts. While the Senate rejected, 50-50, an amendment to the fiscal blueprint requiring offsets, some Republicans plan to fight again this summer when party leaders advance the legislation.
And now that they control Congress and the White House, they are completely responsible for it all. And they are doing NOTHING about it.
CBS
April 10, 2005
Regardless of how it is sliced and diced, we are looking at an annual deficit of $368 billion this year and a 10-year projected deficit on $1.35 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ...
These days, there is nothing on the table worthy of the name "deficit reduction," but there is growing concern. Conservative GOP budget hawks in the House -- embarrassed by the tarnish that the deficits puts on their reputation as the party of smaller, cheaper, more responsible government -- have been challenging their leadership to more aggressively address the deficit problem. The comptroller general of the General Accounting Office, David Walker, has been saying the solvency problem in Social Security is essentially a small stream headed for a much bigger river. ...
So the problem is not just that Social Security may not be able to mail out monthly checks someday in the distant future but that, more perilously, the federal government may find itself so mired in debt that the whole economy just slowly grinds to a halt.
Walker says that without significant reforms we could end up with a federal budget almost entirely committed to interest payments. "[W]e could be doing nothing more than paying interest on federal debt in 2040 if we don't end up engaging in some fundamental reforms of entitlement programs, mandatory spending, discretionary spending and tax policy," he says. ...
The day Bush was sworn into office in 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion, and there was a surplus. On the day he showed up in Parkersburg, it had climbed to $7,782,816,546,352.29. That is seven trillion, seven hundred and eighty-two billion, eight hundred and sixteen million, five hundred and forty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars, and twenty-nine cents. ...
So where are we today? Click the Debt Clock and find out.