Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily argues that the failure of the Supercommittee creates an opportunity for a grand deficit-cutting bargain in 2013. The way to get there is to create a more politically potent trigger mechanism:

It’s possible for Congress to shore up confidence in the nation’s credit profile even in the absence of a grand bargain — or even a midsize one.
The key is for both parties to agree that after they make their case in the 2012 election about the appropriate size of government, they will accept the will of the American people and reach a grand bargain by a date certain in early 2013.
Of course, for the parties to convince each other — and the ratings agencies — that they are committed to doing what it takes to stabilize government debt levels will take more than words. It would likely require a potent poison pill so distasteful that neither side could think of swallowing it.
A concoction of Social Security benefit cuts and payroll tax increases on all income — not just wages below the $106,800 cap – would surely do the trick. If Congress failed to meet its deadline for a specific level of deficit reduction in the first half of 2013, those most bitter provisions would take effect immediately.
While Congress could, in theory, simply vote to undo this poison pill before it triggers, any such bill — in effect, the U.S. Credit Downgrade Act of 2013 — would be dead on arrival. [Emphasis added]

The messages sent by the electorate are so muddled and so plastic that I find it hard to imagine die-hard ideologues, and I use the term respectfully, will ever acknowledge that an electoral drubbing means that they should surrender on any of their core convictions. My concern is that we might still have a divided government after the next election, e.g., a Republican White House and a Democratic Congress. Even so, Jed’s proposal is a sensible one.