WHO SURRENDERED TO WHOM – OBAMA OR THE GOP?

For theater, it’s hard to improve upon what’s happened since President Barack Hussein Obama struck a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax rates for two more years.

The day after (12/07), Mr. Obama held the second most remarkable news conference of his presidency.

On such occasions, a president is supposed to go through certain expected motions — to praise what he considers the virtues of the compromise, and to say something gracious about the negotiators on the other side.

"Graciousness implies that you won," said former White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan.

Instead, "Mr. Obama said, essentially, that he hates the deal he just agreed to, hates the people he made the deal with, and hates even more the people who’ll criticize it," Ms. Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

The most vituperative criticism came in a rowdy meeting of the House Democrat caucus, in which several Members reportedly screamed obscenities about the president.

There followed Friday (12/10) the most remarkable news conference of the Obama presidency.  Many who watched with slack-jawed amazement when the president abdicated the podium to former President Bill Clinton overlooked the irony of the pair endorsing as economic necessity extension of the Bush tax rates against which both have railed for lo these many years.

His flip flop was a brilliant political move, said conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.  "Barack Obama has won the great tax cut showdown of 2010," he declared.

But another conservative columnist, Dick Morris, said what the president had negotiated with Republicans "was surrender, pure and simple."

Mr. Obama "desperately wants to raise taxes on wealthy people, not for the revenue as much to redistribute income," Mr. Morris said.  "But he couldn’t do it and gave in."

Mr. Obama won, Mr. Krauthammer said, because the deal amounts to a second stimulus that will improve the economy enough to boost his prospects for re-election.

Economists think the deal will add nearly a percentage point to growth in the gross domestic product next year, and lower the unemployment rate by a percentage point and a half.  But it would do so at the cost of adding nearly $1 trillion to our mammoth national debt.

It’s the debt increase that bugs Mr. Krauthammer.  "Obama is no fool," he said.  "While getting Republicans to boost his own re-election chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, tea party, this time we’re serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility."

But if Mr. Obama won, he’s sure not acting like it.

In essence, in exchange for a two year extension of the Bush tax rates, the Republicans agreed to a 13 month extension of the federal government’s authority to provide unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks, and for a two percentage point reduction in the payroll tax for a year.

Republicans are content to let Mr. Obama claim credit for these "concessions," if it persuades recalcitrant Democrats to support the deal. 

But the truth is, enough Republicans would have supported extension of unemployment benefits to block a filibuster in the Senate, and back when the stimulus bill was being debated in 2009, it was Republicans who proposed a payroll tax holiday.  The problem was not that Barack Hussein Obama tried to stimulate the economy.  The problem is that what he did didn’t work.

Much of the sturm und drang surrounding the deal is because many on the left haven’t figured out yet there are consequences to the drubbing Democrats took in November, and many on the right imagine Republicans won a great deal more than they actually did.

The urgency behind the deal is that both the Bush tax cuts and unemployment insurance expire at the end of the year.  That would cause substantial economic hardship that both parties would like to prevent, and for which neither party wants the blame.

Perhaps the deal as negotiated is a good one.  But there are more acts to come in this farce.  The Senate is likely to pass it, but not before hanging more spending measures on it, perhaps so many that conservatives can no longer support it. 

But if the compromise fails, the onus will be on President Obama and the Democrats.  And thanks to the controversy, little time remains to consider the other hot button issues Democrats want to pass before the lame duck session passes into history.

Whether the compromise passes or fails, this could be a win-win for Republicans. Or not.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  The House approved the bill late Thursday night (12/16) by a vote of 277-148, over the bitter objections of 112 Dems who voted against it.  It will quickly be signed into law by the President.  To see for yourself, here is the text of the “compromise” tax bill so you can make up your own mind about it,

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.