Those who contend that Republicans can always find a way to screw up a sure thing certainly got evidence of it this week. As the Wall Street Journal put it:
GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.
The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.
Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.
Since ending a tax holiday amounts to a tax increase, naturally a one-year extension would be far better than a two-month one. But show of hands here: Anybody think this will be offset by cuts in spending rather than merely adding it to the debt? Yeah, me either.
