Sometimes the people over at National Review just seem to completely miss the point. And then today they publish a commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy which takes aim at Speaker-elect John Boehner’s support for banning earmarks. Can you be any more tone deaf?

The debt is what the election was about: the growth-killing tab that runs up another $4 billion every day . . . Yet, Mr. Boehner is focused like a laser on . . . earmarks. They are, he says, “a symbol of a broken Washington.” Okay, but they are also less than one 1 percent of our unfathomable $3.8 trillion budget. The problem is not the symbols, it is the broken Washington.

McCarthy’s overall point is that we are headed for fiscal ruin on the gravy train of relentless spending by the federal government. Thank you, Captain Obvious. It wasn’t necessary to make that point by denigrating a major grassroots victory in the process. Opposition to earmarking was almost universally a deal-breaker issue for tea party activists and candidates across the country.

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