Democrats' cynicism yesterday helped Republicans find their inner conservative, barely

Ryan Streeter

Kimberly Strassel hits it on the head in today's WSJ:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell accomplished a mini Christmas miracle. The Kentuckian devoted yesterday to making the arguments—both principled and political—to the Spending Nine...The White House and Democrats will continue to sing the siren song of spending. Every time they do, Republicans would be wise to remember the sweet victory against this omnibus.

Harry Reid handed a baseball bat to Republicans to hit him over the head with, and they nearly whiffed. The "Spending Nine" are the unnamed cadre of Republicans who nearly walked into the Democrats trap to vote for a ridiculous spending bill filled with the greasy pork that voters have clearly signaled they hate.

McConnell's steadfastness and the resulting Republican victory in the game of chicken with Reid is a big deal - in two ways.

The Democrats's cynicism backfired, helped the Republicans find their inner conservative, and created a failure that overshadowed the Republican in-fighting on the tax bill. Right up until the tax bill passed the House, Republicans continued to disagree publicly about whether it was a good thing - which has ultimately revealed that Republicans don't actually have the coherent theory of tax policy that they themselves thought they did. The Democrats' omnibus ended up revealing that the GOP can in fact unite behind a banner of spending restraint, something many thought wasn't possible.

The Democrats' plan almost worked. This is the flip side of the first point. As Yuval Levin points out today at NRO, right up until the end, it looked like Reid would get enough Republican votes to pass the bill, which tells us that it's not only Democrats trying to ignore the message voters sent in November. It' not clear that some Republicans' "road to Damascus" conversion will last. 

The half-full glass way of looking at this is to hope that yesterday's close-call will have a chastening effect among Republicans and strengthen their resolve to get serious about spending.