Republicans wave the white flag

							            Republicans wave the white flag
By Dana Milbank,

Speaker John Boehner emerged
from his weekly huddle with
House Republicans on
Wednesday morning to take his
place behind a mahogany lectern
in front of a brown backdrop.
The dark tones provided ideal
camouflage for the deeply tanned
speaker — as though he were
trying to vanish into the
background.
Who could blame him?
Right now, he is hoping to lead his
fractious GOP to an orderly
surrender. The question is no
longer whether Republicans will give on
taxes; they already have. All that remains to be negotiated is how they will increase taxes, and whether
they will do it before or after the government reaches the “fiscal cliff.”
“I believe that it’s appropriate to put revenues on the table,” Boehner told reporters. “Now, the revenues
we’re putting on the table are going to come from — guess who? — the rich.”
Socialist! Redistributionist! Spreader of wealth!
One of Boehner’s lieutenants, Pete Roskam of Illinois, stepped to the microphones, essentially pleading
for the president to show mercy. “President Obama has an unbelievable opportunity to be a
transformational president — that is, to bring the country together,” he said. “Or he can devolve into
zero-sum-game politics, where he wins and other people lose.”

                                                       Those “other people” would be the House
                                                       Republicans, because it is Obama who seems to
                                                       be holding all the cards right now. A poll by the
                                                       Pew Research Center found that 53 percent of
                                                       Americans would blame Republicans for sending
                                                       the nation off the cliff and only 27 percent would
                                                       blame Obama. And Republicans didn’t help their
                                                       cause by ending their workweek on Wednesday
                                                       and going home.
                                                       Earlier in the week, Boehner offered Obama an
                                                       $800 billion tax increase with the blessing of
                                                       Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the
                                                       Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee this year,
and other House leaders. The speaker is trying to hold
out for making those hikes come from fewer
deductions rather than higher rates, but the White
House is feeling so confident that it dismissed
Boehner’s offer out of hand. Obama communications
director Dan Pfeiffer told Peter Baker of the New York
Times that Obama “won’t sign a deal that doesn’t have
higher rates for the wealthy. Until they cross that
bridge, nothing else is relevant.”
Republicans are looking for face-saving ways to
retreat, such as allowing a tax increase to pass the
House by voting “present” instead of “no.” Jeb
Hensarling (Tex.), the outgoing chairman of the House
GOP conference, acknowledged Wednesday on CNN
that “the president is going to get his revenue one way
or the other.”
As they prepare to accommodate Obama, Republican leaders have begun to crack down on hard-liners
in their ranks who routinely defy compromise. On Monday, two dissidents were removed from the
House Financial Services Committee and two from the Budget Committee.
Outside their meeting in the Capitol basement Wednesday morning, House Republicans were coming
to grips with the inevitability of the tax increase.
“We’re not looking at doomsday,” the GOP whip, Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), assured CNN’s Dana Bash.
Ryan, who signed off on the hike, left the session with a wave. “I’m not doing press,” he said. “I’m just
saying ‘hi.’ ”
Boehner emerged 17 minutes late and five minutes after his aides gave the camera crews a two-minute
warning. “We made a good-faith offer,” he began, promising that “our targets and frameworks are
things that we can all agree on.”
A flustered McCarthy added his perspective. “The president now has to engage,” he said. “I think the
sex” — he caught himself — “the next 72 hours are critical.”
A few on the leadership team repeated the old platitudes about taxes. “An obsession to raise taxes is not
going to solve the problem,” said Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.). Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.)
sounded the refrain that “Washington does not have a revenue problem.”
But the bromides couldn’t conceal the fact that House GOP leaders, with little dissent from the rank
and file, had already acquiesced on some form of a tax increase. “House Republicans are prepared to
get to yes,” Roskam said. “House Republicans are not prepared to get to foolish, and it is foolish to
reject President Obama’s own self-described architecture of $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in new
revenue.”
Coming from a bunch that liked to say they wouldn’t allow a dollar of new revenue even if it came
with $10 in spending cuts, this white flag is as big as a bedsheet.



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