Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still doesn't get it.  The longtime Kentucky senator is quietly and not so quietly opposing a ban on earmarks - or as voters and taxpayers know them, pork barrel expenditures made by members of Congress to curry favor with special interests in their districts and states. 

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is leading efforts to deep-six pork-ladling at taxpayer expense.  Unlike McConnell, Jim DeMint most certainly has his finger on the pulse of America's exasperated taxpayers and outraged voters.  Moreover, DeMint has a real commitment to less government and understands that taxpayer-supported pig troughs are part of what makes for big government.   

McConnell claims that what really chafes taxpayers is the enormous out-of-control spending visited upon hardworking Americans by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime.  No doubt there's more than a kernel of truth to Senator McConnell's assertion, but the Senator misses a critical point by dismissing the estimated $15-$20 billion in annual special favors money-doling as small peanuts compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on stimuli, bailouts, and slated to be spent on the health care ruining Obamacare.

First, most Americans don't consider tax dollars counted in the billions - even the low billions - as small change.  Second, McConnell needs to wrap his Washington-encrusted mind around the idea that Americans are disgusted with what pork barrel spending represents: a money-grubbing, wheels-greasing process aimed at re-electing the congressional members who indulge in it. Bringing home the bacon is the Washington insiders' game.

Senator DeMint needs to prevail on the "No More Earmarks" fight with McConnell.  This is the first of many tests and fights that conservative reformers in and out of Congress will face making genuine efforts to downscale Washington and change the way business is conducted in the nation's capitol.