From Byron York at NRO:

Just got off the phone with an influential Republican senator. I asked how things stood with the stimulus, and he answered instantly, “They’ve cut a deal with three of our guys. They’re delaying us from offering amendments. I suspect that as soon as they’ve got it written, they will offer it as an amendment, vote on it, and that will be it.” He didn’t have details on what the deal might be, but most Republicans seem to suspect it will involve relatively small cuts — and very little change in the price tag of the bill from the House version — that will be touted as a major bipartisan compromise. My senator suspects — hopes? — that no more than four Republicans will vote for the bill.

The entire House GOP managed to get the simple concept that the Democrats should be made to own every single one of their policy prescriptions wholesale. Unfortunately, there are some in the Senate who are desperately clinging to the notion that the American people don’t care how bad the legislation coming out of DC is as long as it’s “bipartisan.” This leads them to think the GOP will be made to look better if we provide “bipartisan” cover for far-left policies, as they are an example of government doing the something, anything! the American people supposedly want.

This is exactly the kind of idiotic behavior that put the GOP in the near-super minority in the first place: acting like Democrat-lites and going along with the charade of “bipartisanship” under the sorely mistaken conception that the American people want something, anything! done by Congress, regardless what that something, anything! may be or do.

There haven’t been any names officially attached to the report of the GOP Senate cave-in, but I’d strongly suggest every one of us give a call to Senators Snowe, Collins, Specter, and Voinovichand tell them not to give cover to the party that was elected to run Washington as a sole proprietorship — especially when it comes to sinking every one of us a trillion dollars further into debt .

The idea that the GOP needs to be Democrat-lite (or Democrat-also), rather than actually being conservative Republican, is so ingrained in some of our Senators’ heads that the only solutions are (a) primarying them, or (b) providing cranium transplants.

These Senators, and perhaps a few of their colleagues, simply can’t get it three key facts through their heads: (1) when the side of the vote the majority of the Democrats are on will always be deemed correct and nondivisive (see the House “stimulus” vote, which saw only Democrats vote for it, and 11 Democrats join the entire Republican caucus in opposing it; now, think about how many times you’ve heard the media call that opposition “bipartisan.” Didn’t think you could remember any); (2) any Republicans opposing the Democrats’ legislation will be called partisan hacks who subscribe to uncompromising, incorrect ideology; and (3) any Republicans who cross over and vote with the majority of Democrats will be used by the press to paint the resulting legislation as “bipartisan,” and to cast the blame on when that legislation does none of what it purported to do.

In other words, geniuses like those who are crossing party lines here to support the $1T something, anything! the Senate is preparing to pass are providing the Democrats with cover and with a whipping boy — all the blame, none of the credit. At the end of the day, the only things they’ll have accomplished with this will be to have sunk us all a trillion dollars further in debt, and to have screwed over their Republican colleagues who actually did the right thing.

I don’t need folks like that on my team. How about you?