Two good things in the budget deal

The spending cuts aren’t enough. Not even close. But as the opening skirmish in a much larger war on extreme spending, the deal struck in Congress Friday night is a modest and survivable win for the Republicans. The Democrats did lose on three fronts, though.

Democrats lost on the question of runaway spending. Their irresponsible, even at times silly, demagoguery didn’t work this time around. No one believes Pelosi anymore when she screeches that the Republicans are trying to starve Grandma. Pelosi is now reduced to trying to convince Republicans to take our own party back so that it will agree with her batty far left policies. Riiiight. That fails the laugh test. The fact that she was in Boston while the spending war raged in Washington says quite a lot. From Speaker to sideline in just a few short months has to hurt.

No one believes Reid anymore when he says Republicans want to cut spending because they hate women. Not after he also defended federal spending on Cowboy poetry and the cherry blossoms, never mind the fact that the face of the GOP is increasingly young and female. Tell Kristi Noem, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin that they hate women, and they’ll laugh in your face. And they’ll look stronger and more like leaders than Reid while they’re laughing at him.

So the Democrats are generally losing the message war. Their old tricks just don’t work now. They also gave in on a couple of tangible policies. The DC abortion rider stayed in the deal, meaning the Democrats abandoned the hill they pledged to die on. Their base will not be happy. The Republicans also won an extension on the DC school choice program. This doesn’t cost additional taxpayer money but does give inner city parents and their children the choice to move their money to schools that give their kids a better shot at a decent education. President Obama and the Democrats strongly oppose the program, not because it doesn’t work — it does — but because it threatens the unions’ monopoly on public education money.

So, not a big win for the anti-spending warriors by any means, but not a total loss either. The Democrats will find themselves ever more constricted in future fights. They cannot plausibly defend every dime of federal spending, which is their inclination. They cannot make the same old arguments either. They will have to come up with new tactics, or adapt to the new reality that government spending is no longer the way to build and maintain their power.