Lots of applause on conservative Twitter today for this set of proposals by Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds. I like ’em too but I’m skeptical that five of them have a chance. Glenn’s goal is to stick Obama with a raft of legislation so popular that, even in a worst-case scenario where O vetoes one of these bills, it’ll cost him something politically.

My question: How likely is it that any one of these would land on his desk in the first place?

1. End the federally imposed 21-year-old drinking age. The limit was dreamed up in the 1980s as a bit of political posturing by then-secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole. It has been a disaster. College drinking hasn’t been reduced; it has just moved out of bars and into dorm rooms, fraternities/sororities and house parties. The result has been a boom in alcohol problems on campus. While drunken driving has declined, it was declining before the age was raised and has declined just as fast in Canada, where the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province…

5. End public-sector employee unions. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker eliminated dues-withholding for public employee unions in his state. The unions were so angry that they organized a recall campaign against him. They lost. They then tried to recall a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who upheld his action. They lost. They then tried to beat Walker in last week’s election. They lost again…

6. Institute a “revolving door” surtax on those who make more in post-government employment. Leave a Treasury job making $150,000 a year to take one in private industry paying $750,000, and you’ll pay 50% surtax on the $600,000 difference. Most of the increased pay is based on knowledge and connections you got while on Uncle Sam’s dime, so why shouldn’t Uncle Sam get a share? An Obama veto would be unpopular.

His other proposals: Decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and take a page from Bobby Jindal and Cory Gardner and make birth control freely available over the counter. Which ones does Obama sign and which does he veto?

None of them make it past Congress, I think, with the possible exception of the OTC birth control bill. Lowering the drinking age and decriminalizing weed are noble libertarian ideas; I’d vote for both if I could. But as of 2007, lowering the drinking age was deeply unpopular with the public. Ending criminal penalties for pot is more popular, but according to Gallup, the electorate is now less inclined to support legalizing marijuana (a distinct but related question from decriminalization) than they were just a year ago. Among the GOP’s conservative base, legalization now polls worse than it did three years ago:

In recent years, the idea of legalizing or decriminalizing weed polls really well with the younger voters the GOP covets … but not so well with older voters, who are core GOP voters at this point. Are Boehner and McConnell going to trade sure votes for maybe votes by passing sensational legislation that pleases the latter while irritating the former? Probably not, no. So those bills aren’t happening.

Then there are the bills that will split sharply along partisan lines. Ending the DMCA and, especially, public employee unions would be sweet music to conservative ears. But the polling on scaling back PEUs is mixed. And needless to say, it’d be extraordinarily difficult to achieve either of these goals since labor and the entertainment industry own the Democratic Party. How do you get 60 votes for either when the GOP will only control, at best, 54 seats? Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review has spent the past few weeks reminding pundits on all sides that the filibuster still exists. It’s tempting, after the GOP’s dramatic win last week, to imagine Boehner and McConnell suddenly jamming Obama up by sending lots of popular bills to his desk to either sign or reluctantly veto, but that’s highly unlikely to happen. Reid will put 41 votes together to block those bills in the Senate before they reach Obama. That’s not a terrible outcome, of course — Democrats can still be blamed for obstructing popular legislation — but a presidential veto is a much more prominent statement of opposition than ho-hum Senate business as usual like a filibuster. So Reid and his rump caucus will defeat these bills and Obama will skate. And before you ask, no, McConnell’s not going to nuke the filibuster and allow legislation to pass by simple majority vote. That’s a recipe for disaster with the Democrats already enjoying very fair odds of retaking the Senate in 2016. You don’t want to normalize the idea of simple-majority passage in the Senate when, come 2017, President Hillary might have 51 votes in the Senate again. (Then again, since the GOP is a lock to control the House for six more years at a minimum, what’s the harm in nuking it?)

That leaves two more bills. If you think Congress would ever slap itself with a 50 percent surcharge on lucrative post-government earnings, you’re far more of an optimist than me. The best you could hope for there is a bill with loopholes large enough to drive a Brinks truck through. It’s a noble idea, too noble for our ruling class. That leaves OTC birth control, which might be agreeable to all sides. The GOP, having seen Gardner use that position successfully in Colorado to defuse Mark Udall’s “war on women” attacks, might be open to it. Democrats, if presented with the bill, would have no choice but to support it, as would O. A Reason poll taken a few months ago found 70 percent support for the idea, with no significant partisan split. Even social conservatives might accept it as a way to further reduce abortion. If anything on this list makes it onto McConnell’s list, and eventually onto Obama’s desk, it’s this. Stay tuned.