Matt Yglesias is up in arms about Kevin Williamson’s failure to weigh in the McConnell remarks quickly enough:

Back on May 4, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat did a good post about the “myths of the supply side” but now that these myths are back in the news he doesn’t have much to say about it. National Review ran the article Douthat was praising but neither the magazine nor the author of the piece has weighed in on the latest controversy.

I’ll just note that Kevin has fairly heavy editing duties, which could be why he’s only reacted to the McConnell remarks today. But I’d say Kevin’s post was worth the wait. Here’s my favorite part:

You know what? Kyl is right: The money does belong to the taxpayer. You know what else? The money Jon Kyl and his colleagues are spending belongs to the taxpayer, too. Jon Kyl’s been known to pork up a highway bill in 2008 — even as he voted against one of the worst of them in 2005. (And Kyl’s one of the good ones.) If you spend the taxpayer’s money, you have to tax the taxpayer, at some point. You cannot magic that money into existence. As I’ve been arguing – ad nauseam, forgive me – taxes are a secondary issue. The primary issue is spending. As ye spend, so shall ye tax. The rate of spending is the rate of taxation; debt and deficits only push the date of tax collection into the future. You can collect the taxes today or you can collect the taxes tomorrow — but what you spend, you will have to collect.

Matt suggests that I’m a rare exception to a broader conservative tendency, but I think he’s wrong. There is a growing number of conservatives, at the grassroots level and at places like NR, who recognize that spending restraint has to be the first and highest priority of conservatives.