Republicans reducing expectations, again

American is in big trouble.

Thanks to Barack Obama's radical agenda, carried out with near dictatorial zeal, the country is going broke.

So what is Mitt Romney's response?

If you haven't noticed, he is already lowering expectations about what he will do to reverse course as president. This is not a good sign.

Recently, he told business leaders he would try to put the federal budget on track to be balanced within eight to 10 years. During the primary campaign, he was pledging to accomplish this by the end of his second term. Before even being elected, he is already conceding he can't or won't do it on his watch. It will be the job of some future president and some future Congress.

He said in his first 100 days he would take steps to reduce the deficit by a mere $500 billion by the end of his first term. To illustrate what a modest agenda this is, the annual deficit is more than $1.2 trillion and growing – fast.

Romney has also been woefully non-specific about what he would cut. He has mentioned reducing subsidies for Amtrak trains and money for public broadcasting – a mere pittance of the money government throws away every year. He has also proposed giving states responsibility for Medicaid funding and cutting costs by limiting how quickly federal spending on those programs would rise relative to inflation. Again, this is hardly the kind of radical approach that will be necessary to counteract the damage done under four years of Obama, let alone return America to constitutional government.

But it gets worse.

He even said that cutting the budget too fast could cause a recession or depression, and he says a balanced budget isn't worth that.

"If you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 percent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression," Romney said in a recent interview. "So I'm not going to do that, of course."

Obviously, what Romney is saying is that he plans to continue borrowing more and more money the government doesn't have for the entirety of his presidency – even if he is fortunate enough to be re-elected in 2016, which, of course, is optimistic indeed with a business–as-usual approach to the economy and spending.

Meanwhile, what is the other side saying?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is suggesting Obama should avoid a new debt-ceiling showdown with Republicans by invoking Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to eliminate the debt limit altogether – allowing the White House and Congress to spend without any checks or balances or ceilings at all!

This week she told a luncheon roundtable of friendly columnists that she hoped the Constitution would be used to "protect the country's full faith and credit." She didn't offer a legal argument in favor of the position but argued on policy grounds that "you cannot put the country through the uncertainty" again, noting that America's sovereign debt was downgraded by ratings agencies in the wake of the standoff even though it was successfully resolved.

"This isn't just about credit ratings," she said, "it's about the dynamism of our economy."

Never mind, in other words, that unsustainable and unchecked debt is exactly what threatens to blow up the economy and destroy America's credit rating. Once again, the Democrats want to misuse the power of the presidency to have their way with the American people.

Even Obama has admitted his administration's lawyers are not persuaded Pelosi's constitutional argument is correct.

But does that even matter with Obama?

When was the last time that stopped him from doing something he considered to be in his best interest?

What we have here is an example of how differently the Republican Party and Democratic Party operate.

The Democrats are always on offense (and usually quite offensive).

Republicans are timid, always on defense, refusing to take the fight to the enemy – and reducing expectations that make even those inclined to support them think twice about it.