GOP Bumper Sticker: Boot Boehner

House Speaker John Boehner appears to be doing his best Neville Chamberlain impersonation in the fiscal cliff negotiations with President Obama.  Chamberlain, England's former prime minister, was infamously duped into appeasing Germany in 1938, only to watch Adolph Hitler unleash a wretched war that engulfed Europe.

Boehner has played the modern day role of Chamberlain by negotiating with a president who has no appetite for compromise. Obama has washed his hands of reforming entitlements, paring the federal budget and trimming the deficit.  In return for nothing but empty promises, Obama has demanded the GOP capitulate and raise tax rates on America's top earners.

This is not a negotiating ploy.  The president believes, because he won a second term, that Americans share his vision of the United States: a country overburdened with debt, saddled with bloated entitlements and handcuffed by federal budgets that depend on ever increasing amounts of debt.

With the media's collaboration, Obama has fooled many into thinking he wants a deal.  He doesn't.  Dunderhead Boehner has not figured that out.  How else do you explain why he keeps trotting up to the White House like a puppy starved for a head pat?  The speaker should have ended the sham long ago by refusing to bargain with a president bent on coercing Republicans to abandon their principles in exchange for meaningless offers for future action on federal spending.  

The bumbling Boehner has been outflanked, outmaneuvered and out smarted in the negotiations.  He has ceded the national narrative to the president by focusing on entitlements instead of the national debt, an issue that concerns most Americans.  He has angered his own party by throwing in the towel on tax increases.  If that wasn't enough, he has failed miserably in his role as party spokesperson.  His news conferences have been irksome, stilted and insipid.

Republicans must overhaul their tactics to save face.  Fortunately, they still have time to salvage a modicum of respect by making these four changes.

1.  Force a vote on raising tax rates on the top bracket.  Forget trying to knit a grand bargain.  Obama will never agree to the GOP laundry list anyway.  He never made any pretense he was in the mood for a bargain.  Make this solely about a tax boost.  That is the only issue that matters to Obama.  He needs a win to placate his base. Serve it up to him on a platter.  He's going to get it anyway.

2.  Vote "present" when the tax increase plan floats to the House and Senate floor.  Republicans should make the Democrats own this tax increase.  They can do this by simply voting "present" to show their disapproval. Even some Democrats may balk at rubber stamping the president's proposal.  When the economy craters,  make Democrats defend the hike in the 2014 mid-term elections.

3. Ditch talk of entitlement reform as part of a bargain.  Democrats know as well as Republicans that entitlement programs are on a suicidal march to bankruptcy.  However, they want the GOP to suffer the consequences of any measures that reduce benefits to recipients, especially seniors.  That's why they have gleefully watched as Boehner harped on entitlements.  Democrats would be only too happy to sign an agreement that alters entitlements just so later they could claim the GOP held a gun to their heads.  They want Republicans blamed for taking away seniors' aid.  

4. Republicans should shift the focus to the 2013-2014 federal budget.  Once the tax increase passes, the GOP should compel the administration to produce a budget that can be voted on in both houses of Congress. Obama and Democrats have dodged votes on fiscal budgets the last three years because their spending excesses would be unmasked.  They prefer secret negotiations instead.  A budget battle provides the GOP with the ideal forum to reign in deficits, lower debt, rehabilitate entitlements and cleave federal spending.

However, nothing will happen as long as Mr. Appeasement shepherds the House.  Neville Chamberlain resigned the premiership in 1940 after his disastrous bargain with Germany.  Boehner needs to take a lesson from history and vacate the office of Speaker of the House while there is still time to save the republic from an economic calamity.