What makes the McConnell plan utterly unacceptable to Republicans is the appearance of capitulation to Barack Obama. The minority leader of the U.S. Senate offers the president unilateral authority to raise the debt ceiling as long as he specifies vague, unenforceable future spending cuts; it would take a complicated process, and two-thirds votes in both houses of Congress, to block a presidential decision to authorize more borrowing. After months of angry debate and sweeping victories in last November’s elections, the GOP leadership needs to reward its loyal supporters with plausible claims of victory in the ongoing battle of the budget. The McConnell scheme offers nothing that even vaguely resembles success, and looks like a cowardly (if cunning) way out of a high-stakes showdown.

That’s also the problem with selling this approach to the public at large: McConnell’s proposal seems to place showmanship over substance, politics over policy. If Republicans voted for it, they would seem to announce: “We’ll give Obama the debt increases he wants, and we don’t care how it busts the budget; our main concern is that we’re able to pin the blame squarely on the president and go on record as voting against it.” The two-thirds requirement for denying a debt increase means that every House Republican and all 47 GOP senators (plus some endangered Democrats) could cast a vote against an unpopular hike in the debt ceiling, without stopping the process or risking default. The proposed ploy may be motivated by a sincere concern for the health of the economy, but it looks cynical and tricky and amounts to an obvious violation of Republican promises to stand unshakably on principle.