Jim Pethokoukis offers a wonderful example of CBO 10-year projection failure: in 2002, the CBO projected that debt would be 7.4% of GDP by 2012. The actual figure: closer to 74%.

Did a lot of unexpected things happen between 2002 and 2012? Of course they did. They always do. This is precisely why you should never regard 10-year budget forecasts as "facts." It's why I apply what I call Crank's First Law: government budget and financial forecasts are always, always wrong.

The school shooting atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut has, predictably, touched off another round of the perennial gun-control debate. Especially for parents of young children (my youngest is the same age as most of the victims), the horror of the shootings is almost beyond description, and tends to make rational discussion impossible. And also unseemly, as Jonah Goldberg has explained. More to the point, this is one of those issues where the public demands foolproof solutions that remain elusive: we keep saying "never again" after mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and all sorts of other manmade and supposedly preventable disasters, but there's never a perfect answer that guarantees that any such thing will never happen again (this is, for example, why anti-terrorism policies are best focused on terrorist organizations rather than lone nuts). We can only and always base public policy proposals on what will reasonably improve the situation without imposing costs we can't live with.

The reality of no perfect or costless solutions lends both a hysterical quality to the gun debate as well as a one-sided burden of proof. Gun control advocates suggest a goal (the complete non-existence of firearms) that is not politically, legally or practically possible, and argue that opponents of any gun control measure show how their alternative would be 100% effective by comparison to a gun control utopia that doesn't and never will exist. In a more rational, realistic debate, you would compare the actual proposed gun controls to a world without those proposals - and in that rational world, the first question for gun control advocates after Newtown is why gun control in Connecticut didn't work after the Brady Campaign hailed the state's tough gun laws as a model of public safety. Gun control - complete with an "assault weapons ban," waiting periods, background checks, "gun free school zone" laws and the rest - was already tried in Connecticut, and it failed to make a difference. If Newtown means anything in the gun debate, it's that gun control doesn't work.

The trenches are long-since dug on both sides; if you can find clips of Archie Bunker discussing an issue on YouTube, chances are that we have already had a "national conversation" about that issue. Of course, changing the culture can be at least as important as changing the law, so it is certainly helpful to look again at how we handle things like responsible gun ownership and mental illness (besides the shooter himself, his mother bears responsibility for having firearms under the same roof with such a mentally unbalanced young man). If there's one valuable service the NRA could provide in this debate - and Wayne LaPierre's ham-handed press conference failed to provide - it is stepping up the cultural battle to engage responsible gun owners outside of government.

But both advocates and opponents of gun control tend to fall too easily into knee-jerk slogans that go too far. It is no less true for being a truism, for example, that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and that we don't get nearly as many calls for controlling, say, knives or baseball bats when they are misused. But it is also true that guns are the most efficient, portable, and cost-effective killing tools we have: that's exactly why they remain the weapon of choice for soldiers, cops, criminals, and hunters all over the world (and why the right to own a gun matters). There's a strong case that good people with guns can be a more effective answer to armed criminals than gun control; gun control advocates are almost invariably willfully blind to the value of this. But that doesn't mean that proposals to arm everyone, everywhere are a good idea with no costs or a perfect, foolproof solution. It does no good for defenders of gun rights to overstate their arguments, any more than it helps proponents of gun control to ignore the costs and limitations of gun control or to react with incredulity to the idea that the Constitution means what it says. Frankly, if your approach to the Second Amendment is to laugh and ignore it, I'm not going to trust you to take the rest of the Bill of Rights seriously either.

I am probably a lot less pro-gun, and a lot less interested in guns, than most conservatives; I've never owned, fired or even held a gun, and personally I could be perfectly happy keeping it that way. I'd be personally content to live in a world with no guns at all. And I'm open to supporting reasonable gun regulations where there is reason to believe they will have more than just symbolic effects. But I also respect practical reality, the Constitution, and the rights of other people to freedoms that aren't personally important to me. A few thoughts and observations on guns, Newtown and the way forward:

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Unlike some of my RedState colleagues, for reasons I explained on Tuesday, I agree with the basic theory behind John Boehner's Plan B solution to the tax side of the fiscal cliff standoff: rather than trading Republican blessings on tax hikes for illusory "spending cuts," let Democrats get the tax hikes they want with no pretense that Republicans support them, pass a bill making permanent those tax cuts both sides can agree on, and take the dispute back to the voters in 2014 and 2016. Then we can have the straight-up spending debate, and hold the line on further demands for even more tax hikes beyond the ones that Obama can get simply by not making a deal.

But Boehner has made what I regard as one significant mistake in this fight: he's letting the Democrats get to his right on middle class tax cuts. Democrats are complaining that Plan B doesn't extend some of the tax cuts for middle and lower income taxpayers, such as the "temporary" payroll tax cut, the Alternative Minimum Tax fix and the "American Opportunity Tax Credit" for certain college expenses (you can see the White House's talking points, driven off yet another study by the left-wing Tax Policy Center, here and here). Some of this is disingenuous, as Democrats characterize the end of temporary government spending on non-taxpayers (including some aspects of the child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit) as "tax hikes." But there are also some legitimate increases in taxes actually paid, mainly the expiration of the payroll tax cut, that will go into effect in the new year if Plan B is the only thing that passes. In other words, Democrats really are pressing for some tax cuts that Republicans are not.

This should never, ever happen to any competent Republican. It's precisely how Obama outflanked Romney on the tax issue during the summer, and you would think the election results should have taught GOP leadership not to repeat that mistake. If anything, Republicans should up the ante: make the payroll tax cut permanent, and dare Democrats to block it. Any time Republicans get a Democrat to concede the value of tax cuts, that's a conservative victory and should be taken to the bank while the getting is good. (As to the particulars of tax credits, Republicans uncomfortable with the structure can always devise an alternative of equal size). Make the Democrats be the ones to argue that Obama's own payroll tax cut is unsustainable or unworkable. As things stand right now, workers - including members of the "47%" who pay no federal income taxes - are enjoying the benefits of being able to spend the money they earn instead of having it taken by the federal government. They are seeing in action the most important conservative fiscal policy argument of all. Republicans should never be the ones standing against that.

I believe it was Conn Carroll who remarked after the election that Ronald Reagan would have looked at 47% of the country paying no federal income tax and called it "a good start." That philosophy animated Republicans under Reagan's and George W. Bush's presidencies and under Newt Gingrich's Speakership: cut taxes for as many people as possible at every possible opportunity. While GOP tax cuts in those eras often benefitted the wealthy who paid the most taxes in the first place, they frequently offered proportionally equal or greater benefit to taxpayers at every income level. That's why the party's tax-cutting brand helped it appeal to middle class and non-wealthy suburban voters. The Romney campaign never understood the importance of never letting Democrats pose as being to the Republicans' right on taxes, and as a result let Romney and the party get painted as too narrow in its economic appeal. If he wants the GOP to stop being the Stupid Party, Boehner should learn the lesson of Romney's defeat, and amend Plan B to include, extend or expand every tax cut the Democrats claim to be willing to support. And Republican tax policy going forward should make that a line as stringently defended as the ATR no-tax-hikes pledge.

Josh Kraushaar on how the Tea Party has made the Republican Party more diverse.

As of January, Hawaii will have at least one Asian-American Senator, Mazie Hirono, and had two (Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka) - all Democrats - before Akaka's retirement at the end of this term and Inouye's death yesterday. Governor Neil Abercrombie, a white Democrat, will appoint a replacement to serve until a 2014 special election. And of course, President Obama is a Hawaiian-born African-American. But in the 147 Senate seats and Governorships covering the other 49 states, there are:

Five Hispanics (Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bob Menendez, Susanna Martinez, and Brian Sandoval): four Republicans, one Democrat.

Two African-Americans (Tim Scott and Deval Patrick): one Republican, one Democrat.

Two South Asians (Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley): both Republicans.

Moreover, Jindal, Haley, Scott, Rubio, and Cruz - Republicans all - all represent states of the old Confederacy (Scott defeated Strom Thurmond's son to win a primary in the district that includes Fort Sumter).

If personnel is policy, the GOP can thank Tea Party insurgents for helping give it a leg up in broadening its appeal.

It's time for John Boehner and the House and Senate Republicans now engaged in the fiscal cliff negotiations to learn a lesson from George Washington: when faced with fighting a losing battle, the wisest course is to retreat rather than surrender.

Washington's Retreats

George Washington didn't get to be the Father of His Country by leading his often outnumbered and outgunned troops on suicide missions. Washington fought few pitched battles in the Revolutionary War, usually unsuccessfully (as at Long Island, Brandywine and Germantown). His signal successes involved surprise attacks (at Trenton) or trapping or cornering his foes without a full-scale open-field engagement (at Boston and Yorktown). Facing numerically superior forces, Washington often preferred to retreat to save his army from disaster, even after successful smaller engagements like the fight at Harlem Heights. Often in 1776 and 1777, as his army unsuccessfully sought to defend New York and Philadelphia from the steadily building British army, Washington would have his troops disengage and slip away in the dark, even at the cost of eventually having both cities captured by the enemy. For much of the war, Washington would resist Congressional entreaties to launch more ambitious offensives (such as an impractical invasion of Quebec), and at times would hastily abandon positions (like at Stony Point) that his men captured but could not defend.

Washington's evasiveness - and his army's endurance of hard marches in the snow at Trenton in the winter of 1776 and winter quarters in the bitter cold at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777 - enabled him to keep his forces together until they were strong enough to fight the British to a standstill at Monmouth and until the reinforcement of allied troops from France arrived. Washington's subordinate Nathaniel Greene conducted a similar campaign in the South, harassing Cornwallis while losing most of his battles (as Greene wrote, "[w]e fight, get beat, rise and fight again") but remaining on the run, avoiding a decisive engagement until Washington and the French could trap Cornwallis at Yorktown in September 1781.

Washington's approach didn't just help his army avoid annihilation or capture until it could grow stronger and obtain outside help. It also staved off an ever-threatened collapse in morale, as Washington's men avoided more of the kind of disastrous routs that would lead to more desertions and fewer recruits. In time, it bonded Washington to his men, who grew to trust his judgment. Of perhaps particular interest to Boehner and McConnell, it also helped Washington avoid being replaced from his command by an antsy Congress. And in the end, it brought him victory.

Washington's Surrender

The one thing Washington never did in the Revolution was surrender. Only once, at the outset of his military career, did he do that, and it ended in disaster for all involved. In 1754, Washington - then a Colonel in the Virginia militia under the command of the British royal governor - was sent to scout the frontier in what is now Western Pennsylvania, with orders that authorized him to fight anyone obstructing British settlements in the area. Finding the French in possession of a partially constructed British fort, Washington and his Iroquois allies launched an attack (begun under circumstances that are murky to this day) that ended up with the French commander, Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, being killed and scalped by the overzealous Iroquois leader, Tanaghrisson, possibly while attempting to negotiate a cease-fire. ("Overzealous" may be putting it mildly - Tanaghrisson split Jumonville's head open and washed his hands in his brains. Boehner's and McConnell's issues controlling their caucus seem mild by comparison.)

The French in the area, under the command of Jumonville's brother Louis Coulon de Villiers, launched a counterattack along with their own Native American allies, cornering Washington (now abandoned by the Iroquois) at Fort Necessity. Villiers threatened to storm the fort and let the Native Americans scalp Washington and his entire garrison, but since the two countries were not at war, he offered Washington safe passage with his men back to Virginia if he surrendered. The deal also included a prisoner exchange at the conclusion of Washington's withdrawal from the area. Badly outnumbered, with rain soaking his ammunition and his men breaking into the fort's liquor supplies, Washington capitulated - and signed terms written in French by a vindictive Villiers that would haunt him:

All Washington had to do was sign the terms of capitulation.

Washington, due to a mistranslation, thought he was confirming that his men killed Jumonville, or so he insisted the rest of his life. The actual French word, "l'assassinate," was more loaded, meaning murder rather than just kill. To make things worse, the document also mentioned that Jumonville had been on a mission to deliver a communication from the French government to the British government; in other words, a diplomatic mission. Washington might have learned this earlier, had Jumonville's letter been fully translated before Tanaghrisson acted, and been able to restrain the Indians. Tanaghrisson, who seems to have understood French, probably realized this.

Washington, duped, blamed his translator, Jacob Van Braam, and never spoke to him again. Neither side ended up honoring the remaining terms of an agreement negotiated in bad faith under duress. The succeeding controversy touched off the global war known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War, with dire results for all sides. For Washington, it meant being sent back to confront the French along with a British expeditionary force led by General Braddock. Braddock sought decisive battle and got it, with his expedition ending in a rout that killed its commander and required Washington to shepherd the remaining forces home safely. For the French, the war itself resulted in the loss of all their North American possessions. For the British, Braddock's defeat convinced the colonials that they could handle battle as well as the British regulars, a discovery that would help trigger the American Revolution 21 years after the surrender at Fort Necessity (a revolution that itself would help contribute to the fiscal crisis that collapsed the French monarchy).

Today's Field of Battle

The Legislative Terrain

The "fiscal cliff" negotiations, which by design were set for right after the presidential election, have been built around the legislative Doomsday Device constructed by the two parties in 2011 and having its roots all the way back to George W. Bush passing tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that would expire in 2010 unless extended. The "cliff" refers to a bunch of things that will happen automatically without legislative action - signed by the President - to prevent them:

This cliff is composed of several parts.

1. The [temporary] payroll tax reduction passed in 2010 will end.
2. The temporary tax rates passed under President Bush will lapse.
3. Obamacare's taxes will come due.
4. The Alternative Minimum Tax will expand to many more taxpayers.
5. Extended unemployment benefits will expire.
6. Some $78 billion in federal spending will be sequestered.
7. Medicare "doc fix" will expire.

By choosing to fight right after the election, Republicans took the risk that Obama would win and negotiate from what is likely to be the high point of his second term popularity. Each side holds hostages: Obama holds the extension of the tax cuts, especially the cuts for the top tax rates, which Republicans want; Republicans hold the extension of the debt limit. On the tax side, Democrats (in a sharp reversal from their position during the Bush years) profess to want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent below a certain income threshold, and have previously passed a bill in the Senate to do so. Obama's hostages among the top rates include the capital gains rate, which is of particular importance to the economy:

The Senate-passed bill to extend Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000 ($200,000 for a single filer) applies to both the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, and thus also allows tax rates on capital gains and dividends over $250,000 to return to 20 percent. It would also reinstate separate tax provisions cutting the amount by which high earners can benefit from the personal exemption and itemized deductions.

On the spending side, the sequester cuts include dangerous cuts to defense spending, which Republicans want to avoid and which Obama professed to not want during the election campaign, and a variety of social-program spending the Democrats want to preserve. Items that could potentially be included in a deal range from entitlement cuts to eliminating deductions in the tax code. Different economists project various sorts of doom from "going over the cliff" or for pretty much any other possible solution; your mileage may vary as to how seriously to take these.

The Political Terrain

Republicans and Obama both have immediate political stumbling blocks and goals aside from their long-term policy interests. For Republicans, the top of that list is the Americans for Tax Reform no-tax-hikes pledge, which most have taken. Grover Norquist, the head of ATR, doesn't wield all that much power by himself, but House and Senate Republicans who have taken the pledge can be in a very bad place with their own constituents (think: "read my lips, no new taxes") if they break it without a really compelling reason to do so. No GOP-controlled House since the institution of the income tax has ever raised rates. But they also have one possible escape hatch: it's not a real violation of the pledge for tax hikes to happen automatically without a vote, especially if Republicans have gone repeatedly on record trying to extend them.

Obama's goal is twofold and related. First, he wants to break Republicans, and divide the party to it's less able to resist him in his second term. And second, he wants to get the core of his economic agenda - the top-rate tax hikes and "Buffett Rule" tax hikes on investments - passed with GOP support so that he can spread the blame for the consequences. Obama may be slow to learn this lesson, but he understands that the game theory calculus from the 2009 stimulus - that the only safe place for Republicans is to wash their hands of his agenda - requires him to find a way to keep Republicans out of that place. Bipartisan cover is particularly important to Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2014 in Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, South Dakota, and Montana (all states Obama lost twice), as well as states like North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. Like Villiers at Fort Necessity, Obama wants Republican signatures on a deal that can be used against them.

But that's if there's an agreement. If there is none, the political reality is that the media is prepared to blame the GOP for any failure to reach an agreement, pretty much no matter the course of negotiations, and in the immediate honeymoon period following Obama's re-election, this will probably work. Democrats have internalized this argument, saying the GOP is checkmated. This has emboldened Obama. Treasury Secretary Geithner declared that the Administration would go over the cliff unless a deal included hikes on taxpayers above $250,000. Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted, as Obama had said repeatedly during the campaign, that Social Security would not be on the table. Dick Durbin says the White House told him the Medicare eligibility age is not on the table. And on the debt limit:

President Obama is saying flatly that he will not negotiate under any circumstances over raising the national debt limit....the President says he won't negotiate under any circumstances. And his top advisors say he's adamant on the point - not just because of the current impasse but to take hostage taking over the national debt off the table for good.

This is all consistent with Obama's traditional approach of offering nothing of value to Republicans to get bipartisan deals done. As usual, Obama is attempting - even without control of the House of Representatives - to proceed on what I've described before as the annihilation strategy of winning legislative victories.

Learning To Retreat

Nervous Hill Republicans have taken all this as a sign that they must accept a deal, any deal, and that Obama has them over a barrel, even if it means trading tax hikes for the illusion of spending cuts. But that is the wrong approach. The GOP can always retreat - but it must be to more defensible ground.

As I have written before at length, you win battles in politics by picking fights you are willing to lose. As streiff's analogy to Keyser Soze makes clear, that includes showing a willingness to stand back and let Obama shoot his hostages. But it doesn't mean the GOP is holding a strong position, either. Some hardliners think "no surrender" means we have the leverage to win all kinds of concessions, and Phil Klein explains why this is madness, and specifically why just walking away completely could leave Republicans in a much worse position come January:

[Consider] the effect on [the GOP's] low-tax brand from letting everyone's taxes go up on Jan. 1. At that point, Obama can go on television and demand a $3.7 trillion tax cut for 98 percent of Americans. What happens to the brand if Republicans oppose a tax cut for the middle class because it doesn't also lower rates on those with the highest incomes?

What happens when Harry Reid holds a vote on a bill that lowers rates on the middle class? Will Republican senators vote against it? If so, their challengers can run ads attacking them for voting against a massive middle-class tax cut. What does that do to the brand? And when, in all likelihood, such a bill passes with near-unanimous support in the Senate, what does it do to the House GOP's low-tax brand if their members resist, bottle up or vote against the same tax cut?

The time for Republicans to win the tax debate was during the 2012 election. They lost. That doesn't mean they need to give away the store, but it does mean that they'll have to make some accommodation for reality.

Even Jim DeMint has argued that it's more or less inevitable that Obama will get a tax hike, whether Republicans agree to it or not.

I highly recommend reading both Klein's and streiff's essays in their entirety, as they frame the two possible approaches to walking away from a deal, along with Drew M's "Let it Burn" argument. Klein says the GOP should just pass an extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone below $250,000, dare Obama and Harry Reid to oppose them, and leave town; streiff argues that Republicans should just let the whole cliff go into effect, tax hikes and all, because the cliff includes cuts the GOP couldn't get at the bargaining table; Drew argues that voters simply need to see the consequences of electing Obama. I think Klein has the better argument, the one that places Republicans in the position George Washington would have appreciated: having retreated to more defensible terrain where they can use their leverage over the remaining hostage (the debt limit) to ransom the defense cuts and perhaps get some additional modest concessions, while making clear that it was the Democrats alone who chose to raise taxes. It now appears that Boehner is pushing a "Plan B" that could do something like that - making the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone below $1 million.

Of course, a retreat does not mean the end of the fight. And while Republicans do not have great leverage, they still have an advantage that gets undercovered by the media: the Democratic camp itself is divided on what it can and can't swallow. For example, Obama may be willing to accept letting the payroll tax cut expire, a move that is deeply unpopular with base groups like MoveOn.Org. Senate Democrats are also divided over "Chained CPI," a method of restraining the growth of Social Security benefits. But the George Washington approach - engage, retreat, maneuver, and make the Democrats show their cards - is a better way to tease out those divisions than either a suicidal last stand or an abject surrender.

Honestly, I have trouble dealing rationally with the Mets trading RA Dickey on the heels of his (well-deserved) Cy Young season. Like letting Jose Reyes go, this is simply something you don't do if you intend to field a competitive team long term in a major market like New York. Sure, Dickey's 38, but he's a knuckleballer; he's as good a bet as David Wright to be a productive contributor to the team in 2015 or 2016. He is also, for very valid reasons, enormously popular and fun to watch, and his salary demands were very reasonable. The Mets' shabby treatment of Dickey reinforces the view that this is a second-rate organization.

If you accept the premise that the Mets had no choice to trade Dickey, then sure, they seem to be getting a decent return - catching prospect Travis d'Arnaud, pitching prospect Noah Syndergaard, and dealing Josh Thole for John Buck (which seems a slight downgrade but Buck has his uses and Thole had a terrible year; his value to the Jays is knowing how to catch Dickey). But far from certain to be equal value. Syndergaard is a 20 year old pitching prospect who's never pitched above A ball; with 53 walks and 196 Ks in his pro career in Rookie and A ball compared to 54 walks and 230 K for Dickey last year in the NL, Syndergaard is at the bottom of a very tall mountain, the top of which is the kind of pitcher Dickey is now. He's not rated a better prospect than Mike Pelfrey was, and Pelfrey just signed with the Twins after an enormously disappointing career in blue and orange. As for d'Arnaud, he has no speed and no plate discipline (41 walks per 600 minor league plate appearances), and had a .418 career minor league slugging average entering 2011. He's hit a lot better since then, but Citi Field is not Las Vegas in the PCL. Also, d'Arnaud played only 67 games this season due to torn knee ligaments; the Mets seem unworried, which is reassuring if you have a lot of faith in the Mets crack medical staff.

Maybe both prospects work out, but the Mets are courting the KC Royals cycle here, where it doesn't even matter how good the prospects are because nobody believes anymore that the team is going to spend the money to field a contender when they're ready. And unlike the Royals, they can't blame this on playing in a small market.

Dickey's season, along with Johan Santana's no-hitter, made the 2012 Mets watchable through everything that went wrong. This deal represents a rejection of fielding a watchable team in 2013, and suggests a long-term approach that gives less rather than more cause for optimism.

Should Republicans trade tax hikes for spending cuts? Much of the debate over the current fiscal cliff standoff centers around discussions of "ratios": Republicans will agree to X dollars of tax hikes, Democrats will agree to Y dollars of spending cuts, and so forth.

Much of this discussion is based on numbers that are misleading or worse, because Washington doesn't calculate taxes and spending the same way. A tax hike will raise real, immediate costs on real taxpayers, whether or not it actually raises any more revenue. The targets of a tax hike are citizens, who do not have a choice whether to obey. By contrast, a "spending cut" may simply involve altering future projections of the rate of increase of spending, and thus agreements to cut spending rarely actually result in less spending. And the targets of such spending cuts are future Congresses, who can disregard them at will; they're not binding.

The only real equivalents to tax hikes are (1) complete elimination of federal spending programs or (2) changes in the eligibility criteria or benefits formulas for entitlement programs. There are fair arguments about the best GOP strategy in managing the tax debate, but if a negotiated agreement is to be reached that will require Republican votes to pass, Republicans should not even consider agreeing to trade tax hikes in exchange for anything less.

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