Over the past month, House Republicans have used the stimulus bill to redefine their party, present ideas on how to revive the economy, and force congressional Democrats and the president to take ownership of the spending programs soon to be signed into law…

They also wisely put ideas on the table, such as cutting the bottom two income tax rates and small-business taxes while extending unemployment insurance and other safety-net provisions. With these proposals, Republicans generated news and made it possible for their members to be for something that made sense to their voters. It also helped that the same methodology that the White House used to claim that the Democratic stimulus bill would create four million new jobs showed that the Republican approach would create six million new jobs, at half the cost.

The payoff is that support for the stimulus bill is falling.