Traditionally, a bipartisan plan has meant a plan in which both parties give a little to get a little. You give me spending cuts and I’ll give you tax hikes, for instance. But one of Mitch McConnell’s great insights is that what makes a plan bipartisan is votes, not ideas. Thus, with a Democrat as president, a bipartisan plan is a plan that Republicans vote for. And because Republican Party discipline is such that Republicans don’t vote for plans that McConnell and John Boehner tell them to vote against, a bipartisan plan is, well, whatever they say it is.

That’s how McConnell can say, with a straight face, that “President Obama needs to decide between his goal of higher taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit. He can’t have both.” According to the various negotiators, the administration has already agreed to $2 trillion or so in spending cuts. So the White House began by giving a lot. But now that it’s time for them to get a little, McConnell and Boehner are officially informing them that the only path to bipartisanship in the current Congress is for them to agree to get nothing at all. A simpler restatement of his point is that you can have your ideas or you can have our votes, but you can’t have both. That’s not bipartisanship. It’s a ransom note.

But it should be no surprise. Back in January, McConnell sat down with Politico’s Mike Allen for an interview. Asked by Allen about the prospects of working with the White House, McConnell said, “If the president is willing to do what I and my members would do anyway, we’re not going to say no.” Allen was, understandably, a little confused. “But that’s not much of a concession.” he said. “That’s not bargaining, to just give you what you want.”

You can almost hear the smirk in McConnell’s reply. “I like to think I’m a pretty good negotiator,” he said. And indeed he is.