The New York Times reports on the division over spending among conservatives, who are in the process of eating their young in Colorado and elsewhere for not cutting spending enough. The solution they’re proposing? Constitutional limits at the state level:

Conservative frustration with government growth increased with President Bush’s first term, which added more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Conservatives once talked of electing their own; they now talk of electing their own and tying their hands.

Stop us before we spend again? “Yes, that’s really it,” said Mr. [Dick] Armey, who argues that the pressures to spend, reinforced by lobbyists and contributors, can overwhelm even the firmest conservatives.

In Ohio, the secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative this fall. A Republican running for governor next year, Mr. Blackwell readily concedes that the increased spending over the past decade has come with Republicans controlling both the legislature and governor’s mansion.

“The G.O.P. has given the state the two largest tax increases in state history,” he said. “You need fiscal architecture in the Constitution that establishes guardrails.”

Armey blames the problem on lobbyists and contributors, but who’s missing from that list? Voters! Republicans refuse to consider the possibility that voters sometimes really do want more spending on education, health care, police, prisons, roads, etc. (There must be a reason that Republicans keep saying they’re going to cut government and then failing to do it.) And if voters do want more spending, shouldn’t they get it? After all, we live in a democracy. It’s one thing to put a balanced budget requirement in a state constitution, where it is harder to amend, but why should the level of government spending be put outside the realm of year-to-year democratic choice? I’m sorry that Republican politicians have such a hard time following the dictates of Grover Norquist, but that doesn’t make constitutional spending limits good public policy.