AP: "Fiscal Cliff Blowup Caused By GOP Policies: Analysis"

[TomCADem]

Here is a rare AP story that does not conclude that Democrats and President Obama must "show leadership" by giving up their demand for higher taxes in order to reach a deal with Republicans. The Republicans are being called to task for a change. It must be Christmas. First, the NRA is actually not being given a free pass. Second, Republicans are receiving the blame they deserve.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/22/fiscal-cliff_n_2351703.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans seem shocked by their party's meltdown on the so-called fiscal cliff. They shouldn't be.

The uncompromising conservatives who blocked Speaker John Boehner's tax bill were merely sticking to policies that Boehner and nearly all other GOP leaders have pushed, without reservation, for years: It's always wrong to raise tax rates on anyone, no matter how rich. The nation's big deficit is entirely "a spending problem, not a revenue problem." And in any deficit-reduction plan, spending cuts must overwhelm new revenues, by 10-to-1 if not more.

To be surprised by Boehner's failure is to assume one of two things. Either House conservatives didn't really believe their party's bedrock principles; or they would compromise after seeing President Barack Obama win re-election on a deficit-reduction plan that called for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Neither was true. And now the Republican Party is reeling from unbending fealty to its core principles.