Suck. It. Up.

The ’90’s were the “Get Over It” decade.

Perhaps the ’00’s should be the “Suck It Up!” decade.  Or, if we are very unlucky, we’ll have to wait until the ’10’s.

Michelle Malkin[*1] :

I need a man. A man who can say “No.” A man who rejects Big Nanny government. A man who thinks being president doesn’t mean playing Santa Claus. A man who won’t panic in the face of economic pain. A man who won’t succumb to media-driven sob stories.

A man who can look voters, the media, and the Chicken Littles in Congress in the eye and say the three words no one wants to hear in Washington: Suck. It. Up.[*2]

The Michigan primary put economics[*3] at the top of the political radar screen, and the Democrat presidential candidates have been doling out spending proposals, stimulus packages, housing market rescues, and other election-year-goodie pledges like Pez candy dispensers gone haywire. Which leading GOP candidate represents fiscal accountability and limited government? Who will take the side of responsible homeowners and responsible borrowers livid at bipartisan bailout plans for a minority of Americans who bought more house than they should have and took out unwise mortgages they knew they couldn’t repay?

I don’t want to hear Republicans recycling the Blame Predatory Lenders rhetoric[*4] of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Jesse Jackson[*5] . Enough with the victim card. Borrowers are not all saints. There’s nothing compassionate about taking money from prudent, frugal families and using it to aid their reckless neighbors and co-workers who moved into McMansions they couldn’t afford or went crazy tapping their home equity and now find themselves underwater.

How long can we afford to pay the bill for other people’s irresponsibility?  At what point do we start demanding that our fellow citizens get their snouts out of the public till, put their heads down, get to work, and SUCK IT UP?

It’s hard to be “heartless.”  It’s much easier to be an enabler–“oh, you poor thing, here, let me allow you to continue to wallow in self-destructive behavior while fooling yourself that all of your problems are caused by somebody else.  Poor baby.”

You know what?  If you took out one of these sub-prime mortgages to buy a house you couldn’t afford, you’re an idiot.  If you were the ones holding out sub-prime loans to people who couldn’t afford them, you’re a scoundrel.

Scoundrels need idiots almost but not quite as much as idiots need scoundrels.

Suck it up, everyone.  You made your own hole.  Dig yourself out of it.  Quit borrowing money, start living on, as Dave Ramsey says, “beans and rice, rice and beans.”  Take control of your own life, unless you really, really, really want somebody else to control it for you.

Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look like a large segment of the American public wants exactly that.  To which I can only say: be very careful what you wish for.