Kevin McCarthy won a prohibitively costly “victory” yesterday by pushing through the House of Representatives a debt ceiling hike supported by more Democrats than Republicans. 

After the vote, the Speaker boasted that it was easier to do than he had anticipated. Here’s why: Surrendering generally takes less effort than fighting and prevailing over your partisan foes.

In this case, as a White House official made clear, the so-called bipartisan compromise “locked in,” rather than defunded, Democratic priorities – like hiring 87,000 armed IRS agents and radical leftist energy and climate change priorities. And there’s no limit to how much additional national debt can be incurred over the next two years.

Mr. McCarthy’s Pyrrhic victory will have another cost: It profoundly alienates Republicans who voted for a real opposition to the Biden Marxists, not a controlled one that merely enables their take-down of America. 

This is Frank Gaffney.