The fiscal cliff is a terrible misnomer. As Dave Weigel writes, it has nothing to do with our finances and would in fact be more accurately labeled as a huge dose of austerity. Neither party wants the 5.1% cut to the GDP that it would entail.
The reasons here are illustrative: Republicans do want cuts on this magnitude. Paul Ryan's proposed budget would cut the budget by over 6% by 2021. Granted, these cuts would take place over a longer period of time, but they would not substantially come from defense cuts that the fiscal cliff ensures. Instead, they come largely from social programs like Medicaid.
What can we conclude from this? First, Republicans have no interest in actually making substantial, difficult cuts to the budget. Mitt Romney's plan, as many have pointed out, mathematically will do nothing to alleviate the deficit in the short or medium term. It's just empty rhetoric. Second, the Republican opposition to the cuts the fiscal cliff portends demonstrates that they know austerity, in our current economy, would lead to more recession. This is of course contrary to the past 4 years of rhetoric from conservatives like Paul Ryan and the Tea Party ideologues -- which led to the damaging debt ceiling debacle.
When Republicans talk about cutting the deficit what they really mean is keeping defense spending high, keeping upper income taxes low, and cruelly slicing social programs to meet their ideological goals -- not actual deficit reduction.