Well, if you’re John Boehner, you spray on a fresh tan, squirt a few fresh tears, then make a big ol’ pitcher of surrender-ade:

Having difficulty finding consensus within their own ranks, House Republican leaders have begun courting moderate Democrats on several key fiscal issues, including a deal to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week.

The basic outline would involve more than $30 billion in cuts for the 2011 spending package, well short of the $61 billion initially demanded by freshman Republicans and other conservatives, according to senior aides in both parties. Such a deal probably would be acceptable to Senate leaders and President Obama as long as the House didn’t impose funding restrictions on certain social and regulatory programs supported by Democrats, Senate and administration aides said.

The fact that Republican leaders have initiated talks with some Democrats shows some division within House Republicans just two months after taking over the House. Speaker John A. Boehner’s leadership team recognizes that legislation that meets with approval from his most conservative flank — what Democrats call the “perfectionist caucus” — would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

— And if you’re a GOP establishment type, it is far better to pretend to do something than it is to get your hands dirty actually doing it.

What’s most depressing, should this deal come to pass (and there are plenty of depressing moments to choose from) , is that all of these cuts were cuts the Dems were prepared to make anyway — and much of the money cut isn’t even real; instead, it’s money found through manipulation of numbers and all sort of predictable DC accounting massages.

The bottom line is, we are not being represented by the leadership we installed. And that’s because the leadership is comprised of the very kind of feckless, impotent, cowardly career politicians whom we worked so hard to rid ourselves of in November.

Rather than shut down the government and make their case to the American people that these proposed cuts the Dems are offering amount to less than 1% of a budget stuffed with $1.65 trillion in deficit spending — and that, in five working days, the government will have spent again what they just ostensibly “cut” — the GOP is ready to roll over, claim a minor victory, and move on to business as usual.

Rather than point out that the Democrats have admitted that their plan is to launch a dishonest propaganda campaign against those very taxpayers who rose up in November to demand reform and fiscal sanity — and to say that they won’t be cowed by such loathsome behavior, nor will they allow the next generation to be enslaved by those who seek to blackmail us into fiscal ruin — our airbrushed party hack has decided simply to surrender.

I’m actually embarrassed for the guy.

And I despair for what was once the greatest country on earth, ever.

(thanks to I. Callahan)