Remember that whole bit about the president telling us to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain and Germany”? Yeah, that one. Well, even E&E News covered the Spanish subsidy collapse today, so you know economic reality is intruding into some of the most reluctant circles. Now, on to Germany!

Der Spiegel:

Government subsidies for solar energy in Germany have reached absurd proportions, as ordinary consumers pay out billions to support solar power. Now plans to reduce the subsidies are encountering massive resistance from the industry and a number of German states, which benefit from the current arrangement.

(That’s right! Der Spiegel! As someone quipped in an e-mail to me earlier, “When you lose Der Spiegel can Die Zeit be far behind?”)

This news from Germany — on top of Spain’s debacle finally being affirmed — comes just in time for Monday’s release of Kerry/Graham/Lieberman, the cap-and-trade bill that we’re being told isn’t really a cap-and-trade bill, even though it has cap-and-trade in it. That definitely isn’t a gas-tax bill, even though it has a gas tax in it. You know, that one — the global-warming bill that we’re being told is really a jobs and national-security bill even though, oddly, it’s written as a global-warming bill.

If the Republicans choose to listen to the public and stand up to this move — which even now Harry Reid is threatening to push via reconciliation and the abandonment of the committee process — they’ve got a winner for a bar-the-door, knock-down, drag-out fight about what sort of values and responsibility we expect from our government.

If the GOP doesn’t, well, that’s what the political wilderness is for. But it will be you and yours who pay the price.