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One always hopes that things will change, but as Chris Wickham observes in his excellent book The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-100, right-wing punditry has been hitting some themes for well over a millennium:

Salvian of Marseilles wrote a long hell-fire sermon called On the Governance of God in the 440s which ascribed Roman failures against the (obviously inferior) “barbarians” to their own sins: notably, unjust and excessive tacation, public entertainment, and sexual license.

I have never understood why it is conservative to take an attitude toward the natural world of how best to exploit and use it entirely for short term benefit. (My first ever publication was a paper for Thatcher called "Greening The Tories"). The conservative, it seems to me, will not be averse to using the planet to improve our lot, and will not be hostile to the forces of capitalism and self-interest that have generated such amazing wealth and abundance in the last three hundred years.

But a conservative will surely also want to be sure that he conserves this inheritance, for its own sake and also for his future use. He will want to husband the natural world, not rape it and throw it away. He will see the abandonment of all values to that of immediate gratification as a form of insanity, if not evil.

The recession made deficit cutting in the here and now imprudent in his first year; but now addressing the long-term debt is itself necessary for stabilizing the economy - and reassuring independent voters that he, unlike his predecessor, gives a damn about fiscal health. Well: the good news is that he's going to do exactly that:

President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.

There is another passage in Continetti’s Palin article that tells us a lot about the mentality of Palinites and those who would pander to them:

Dismiss airy prophecies about “peak oil,” “green jobs,” and “limits to growth.” Pledge, instead, that Americans will have access to as much of the cheapest, cleanest energy they need to stimulate the economy. Palin is right. No limits.