Twice this year the GOP House leadership achieved the remarkably difficult feat of putting up goose eggs on huge, controversial pieces of legislation: the Pelosi/Reid/Obama stimulus and the Pelosi/Reid/Obama budget. Each time the media was surprised, and the solidarity of House Republicans became as much the story as the passage of partisan Democratic legislation. Each time the stage was set for a suddenly much more difficult Senate fight. But most importantly the big zeroes on the scoreboard went a long way toward repairing the breach between Republicans and grassroots conservatives, dispirited by years of big spending Republican majorities and a big spending Republican president.

Later this week the House is expected to vote on some version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy tax bill. The version most recently scored by the Congressional Budget Office included an $846 billion tax hike. The bill will have no discernible effect on global warming, and even in the EPA has said it could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions because it will send so much manufacturing activity abroad.

Democratic strategists now recognize that they can’t even pretend the bill is about global warming, which President Obama managed not to mention even once yesterday in his press conference. They are scared to make claims about green jobs, in the face of overwhelming evidence that every green jobs created destroys more than two regular jobs in the process. Now it’s only about “clean energy,” which is code for empowering Washington politicians and bureaucrats to do central economic planning by taxing and rationing energy.

This vote has nothing to do with the environment, and every Republican in the House needs to understand that. This is a vote about taxes. Taxes on gasoline, electricity, natural gas, and by implication everything grown, shipped, or manufactured in the United States. Opposing a huge tax bill and Washington power-grab is no more difficult to do in an environmentally-inclined coastal district than it is anywhere else.

If the Republican brand is ever again to mean lower taxes, lower spending, and a strengthened rule of law then there is no excuse for any Republican to vote for Waxman-Markey. Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Whip Eric Cantor did a very powerful thing when they put those goose eggs on the board earlier this year, and those votes will only continue to look better with time. All Republicans would be well-served to help put another zero up on Waxman-Markey and expose it for the partisan tax hike and power grab it is.