Playing Illinois Hold 'Em on Tax Cuts

Maybe we'll get to see some of Barack's vaunted poker-playing skills after all.

Steve M. sees Boner and the repugs setting up the dems to take the blame whatever happens with tax cuts.

BOEHNER DIDN'T REALLY BLINK

John Boehner said today thay he'd accept a repeal of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy if he has no other choice -- but I don't think he would have said this if really believed believed he might have no other choice.

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But it's a feint.

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There's no way in hell that Republicans can let Obama win on this -- certainly not before November. The GOP's enthusiasm gap would disappear overnight. The base absolutely will not accept a compromise. And if Obama wins and the Republicans still somehow manage to take back the House, Boehner will be seen as such a traitor that the grassroots will howl for his head and insist that he not become Speaker.

He has too much low cunning not to know this. He also knows that three Democrats plus Lieberman in the Senate want to extend all the tax cuts, as does Mitch McConnell. So he's responding to a hypothetical he thinks won't come to pass -- he thinks Republicans and Judas Democrats can stop the White House plan. It's still odd that he feels he has to play good cop, but it's only because he think bad cops are going to take it from here.

Read the whole thing.

Zandar also also sees a trap for the dems:

John Boehner may have signaled fold on tax cuts for the rich, but that's only because he clearly expects there's enough Democrats to scuttle the entire tax cuts bill without maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, too. He's up to something, and that something is clearly blaming the Democrats for not getting this thing passed and behind them before the tax cuts expire for all Americans on January 1.

Boehner clearly wants this out of the way and figures that once again the Dems will shoot themselves in the head on this one. He may not be wrong.

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And if the Dems blow this, it's going to end them. Boehner is counting on that happening and is already putting all the blame on what happens squarely on the Dems. He figures enough Blue Dogs will revolt to kill the whole thing, and that's exactly what he wants to see happen.

Can the Dems maintain enough coherence to get this together? That remains to be seen.

Read the whole thing.

But Josh Marshall sees a huge opportunity for the White House.

Boehner gave the president and the Democrats a big opening by conceding that he'd vote for an extension of only those tax cuts on incomes under $250,000 a year.

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Legislation and politics aren't two separate worlds. Each feeds off each other, as the Democrats learned to their profound discomfiture during the Health Care Reform debate last year. Especially on the cusp of an election, any inability to grasp this can and usually is fatal.

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The President has three key interests.

First is to push policies that generate more demand in an economy that appears to be stumbling without signing on to a permanent extension of the upper income tax cuts which won't stimulate the economy in the short-term and are budgetarily ruinous in the long term.

Second, is to find a footing to galvanize Democrats for the next seven weeks and give them something for him and them to run on. At the moment the Democrats campaign platform appears to be "Are you kidding? These Republicans are friggin' crazy. And then did a lot of crazy stuff back when that Bush guy was president!" True enough. But lacks of a certain propulsive force.

Third is to sow dissension in Republican ranks.

Boehner's comments give the president the opportunity to do all three. And with the legislative leadership on the Hill seemingly hapless, it looks like it will come down to the President and how he plays his cards over the next 48 hours.

Read the whole thing.