After spending the last couple days depressed by the President moving away from his first offer (which I rather liked) into a second offer where he (in my opinion) is trading permanent tax giveaways to the rich and SS benefit cuts for temporary stimulus...
I poked around today at some Red reactions to Plan-B.
They consider raising tax rates on the millionaires to be as huge a betrayal of trust as the typical Kos reaction to Chained CPI.
I find this mind boggling (the Chained CPI for SS as Democratic policy is an unforced error, where the tax rates on Millionaires are going up if no deal is reached, period, so you'd think the Rs would get SOME credit for keeping tax rates low on everyone else). But it is a consistent meme - even the millionaire tax increase is a Betrayal. It's not just the fringe either...a relatively center-right site like RCP has lots of articles bashing Boehner and plan B. And the comments make ours look tame.
So maybe the political damage to the offers will wash out, since neither is going to become reality, and will probably not even come up for a vote. It does look like the fiscal cliff is what is going to happen in the short term. I personally think Howard Dean has it right when he considers it to be the best deal we're going to get in the current environment.
This sentiment is pretty typical (from a Redstate/Erickson article today)
An old joke, long attributed to Winston Churchill goes like this. Churchill asked a famous British socialite, “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?”
“My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course,” the socialite replied.
Churchill then asked, “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” at which the socialite angrily responded, “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?”
Winston Churchill calmly replied, “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”
That story describes what John Boehner is doing to his own Republican Conference. Boehner wants to establish that the GOP will support tax hikes and decoupling, then he will come back and negotiate the actual deal. When we protest that it’s a tax hike, he will point to this vote and say, “Excuse me?”