Democrats wince at the very notion of a restriction on government spending, and Republicans grudgingly embrace it after years of big spending. Tea Partiers laugh at it for the Potemkin village that it is.
Fill in the blank over at Michelle Malkin’s: Obama proposing spending freeze is like ______.
And over at Hot Air, Ed has a good reality check and a poll:
If Republicans want to be seen as the party of reduced federal spending, then we have to support, well, reduced federal spending. Even steps in the right direction should come with positive reactions, especially since they do create a baseline of expectation that further increases will break these pledges — even if Obama attempts to explain that the increases were exempted from the freeze. It makes all of his potential big-spending programs that much more politically fraught, and Democrats supporting them that much more politically vulnerable, in the long run.
