[Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union.]

In 1979, of course, Jimmy Carter was the incumbent President, and no sophisticated, intelligent person in Washington thought Ronald Reagan had a serious chance of beating him. The RNC was convinced Reagan would be another Goldwater, and its entire focus was to deny him the 1980 nomination. You know what happened.

In 1995, President Clinton had just suffered a shocking, historic defeat in the midterms, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. At first, he seemed to be on the same trajectory as Carter. But he pivoted to embrace the policies of the new Republican Congress, while still managing to play off them to hold his Democrat party base. The Republicans nominated the clueless Bob Dole in 1996, and you know what happened.

Hence the question, is today 1979, or 1995? You can't answer that question by looking at where we are today. You have to look at the underlying trends to gauge where we are going to be in the fall of 2012...