Boehner Blackmailed

The failure to reach a compromise agreement today at the White between the House and the Senate was caused by John Boehner moving the goalposts. A livid--if he can ever get livid--Harry Reid charged that Boehner wouldn't agree to any compromise unless he could get 218 Republican votes. Apparently, this is true.

In short, Boehner will do nothing unless he can persuade the teabaggers to go along. While Boehner has been quietly telling the Beltway media that the teabaggers are nuts, he is too intimidated by them to put up any resistance. The teabagger strategy all along was to shut down the government and now with Boehner changing the rules, he is in effect giving them what they want.

Another tidbit is that Senate and House negotiators have been dealing with the figure of $33 billion cuts to be the compromise. Well, now Boehner is holding out for $40 billion--again changing the goalposts late in the day.

A Note on the "Boehner Rolling Stone" interview. A number of bloggers have noted that it is a hoax, citing the source as website that does sophisticated parodies. But then again, one blogger wrote,in a fundamental sense all the comments truly reflected Republican thinking anyway.

One interesting observation about today's events. With a budget compromise still possible,people have speculated that the big rollout of the Paul Ryan's Attack on America program was to demonstrate to teabaggers what large cuts the GOP will fight for this coming year. So, the teabaggers should be happy and wait for the real war. In fact, several Republican pundits have chided Congressman Pence and others with trying to win the battle this year and losing the war the next.

I like the idea but I simply do not believe the GOP has that type of political sophistication anymore to play that game. I also know the teabaggers wouldn't have the smarts to pick up the signals anyway.

So far, only leftwing websites are alerting everyone that the Ryan Plan means abolishing Medicare and eliminating Medicare through block grants. Our media wizards seem to have fallen for Rep. Ryan.