So yes, the deal that was cut this week was a policy victory much more for Democrats than Republicans. And given the Obama-era GOP’s obstructionist devotion, it’s remarkable that it made it through a Republican-controlled House – remarkable enough to make you wonder what the GOP could possibly have been thinking.

The answer, of course, is that Republicans are convinced they can cut a new deal over the next few months, one that will reflect their zeal for making deep cuts in safety net programs. They believe this because this week’s deal left the big questions about entitlements unresolved. So instead of addressing Medicare and Social Security in the face of a deadline that seemed to give President Obama more leverage, Republicans will now pursue their agenda in the face of three deadlines they think will give them the upper hand: the debt ceiling (which must be addressed by early March), the $1.2 trillion sequester (automatic cuts now slated to be go into effect on March 1) and the continuing resolution that funds the government (due to expire in late March).

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If anyone outside the Beltway was paying attention (a big "if"), they probably thought the title referred to an old episode of “Cheers” in which the goofy mailman does his taxes. After all, replaying reruns would have been more compelling content than this latest installment of "Real World: U.S. Capitol."

Reality TV, of course, is this moment's perfect metaphor. That schlocky format's foundational oxymoron -- it is "real" but not real -- also defines contemporary politics.

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Boehner has been an unusually weak speaker, one who has little power to bend his own party’s rank-and-file to his will and little space to cut deals with the other party. That’s not about to change, as his handling of the fiscal cliff showdown demonstrated, which is why I wondered a few weeks ago why he’d want to sign up for two more years. But he evidently is willing to pay the price, and we saw on Tuesday night exactly what that means. As The Hill reported:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is signaling that at least one thing will change about his leadership during the 113th Congress: he’s telling Republicans he is done with private, one-on-one negotiations with President Obama.

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"I do not support the bill," Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told reporters after Republicans held a lengthy closed-door meeting to gauge support for the compromise. Cantor is an influential leader of conservatives and younger Republicans in the House.

Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, and other participants said the overwhelming sentiment among House Republicans was to amend the bill to incorporate more spending cuts and send it back to the Senate. Several lawmakers and aides said such a move was likely, and on balance the GOP reaction seemed to seriously complicate efforts to enact a new law before the current Congress expires on Thursday.

"The speaker and leader laid out options to the members and listened to feedback," said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "The lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today's meeting. Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward."

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As the action on the fiscal cliff debate shifts to the Senate, the Post assesses where Boehner stands with his caucus. Boehner will need GOP support to bring any Senate compromise bill to a vote in the House, and could not find the numbers within his own party for his "Plan B" compromise.

A fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, told the paper, essentially, that Boehner's failure to lead with a decisive hand is what House Republicans admire about him.

“Boehner’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness,” said LaTourette, who then contrasted Boehner with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

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This isn’t a decision about war and peace, or abortion, or gay and lesbian rights – issues on which compromise is exceedingly hard to find because of the nature of the issue. A nation can’t be halfway at war; abortion either is or isn’t murder. Budget disputes – overall spending totals, and especially tax questions – are by nature just not like that. A few billion more for the Pentagon or a few billion less? That’s exactly the kind of question normally solved by striking a deal.

Now, granted, even in cases where the two sides eventually compromise, it might not seem as if they will, even right up to the last minute. And it’s always more difficult than just picking a number halfway between what both sides want. After all, bargaining power may not be equal; right now, Democrats control both the White House and one chamber of Congress, so they might be able to get a bit closer to their ideal point than will the Republicans, who have only the House. Meanwhile, both sides may inflate their original bids; it takes quite a bit of bargaining to get to where negotiators’ true positions are revealed, thus allowing for the difference to be split (or for the side better at bluffing to do a bit better than it should).

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While the details are sketchy and reports conflicting, according to the New York Times, the proposal would extend the Bush tax cuts up to $400,000 (instead of the $250,000 most Democrats want), and it would extend some important tax credits, but it would leave the estate tax as is, do nothing about the sequester (the automatic spending cuts that will go into effect January 1) and do nothing about the debt ceiling.

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The cowardly Democrats put it all on the table
Like cuts to the elderly, poor and disabled.
So Republicans, thinking their ploy was a score,
Figured why not hold out until Democrats cut more!

Even with taxes the lowest in years
Republican donors clung tight to their Lears.
If taxes were raised there would be hell to pay
And less money to beg for come re-election day.

Plus unlike Democrats, Republicans were clear
They wanted to drown government, and this was their year.
Never mind the election or the poll trackings
Democrats missed the message and their weak spines were cracking.

With one little press conference, lively and quick,
Obama pulled out the rug from under seniors like St. Nick.
And conservative Democrats are disgustingly jolly
Pretending that poor folks can live off of holly.

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I hope that includes the president.

On a day marked by rumors of action that mainly turned out to be false – thanks in part to a Facebook post by soon-to-be-former Sen. Scott Brown – it was easy to believe the phony blame game that apportions equal responsibility to both sides, even though it's perfectly clear that Democrats have compromised to a fault, while the GOP won't. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid misdiagnosed the problem when he said House Speaker John Boehner was running a "dictatorship" – if he was a dictator, he could have at least passed Plan B. Reid's playing Dueling Floor Rants with the impotent Mitch McConnell could make anyone say "a pox on both their houses."

Of course, Reid was right on one point: The simplest way to resolve at least the looming tax hike problem is for the House to pass the Senate bill that extends the Bush tax cuts for everyone but the top 2 percent of taxpayers. I'm not sure I trust Reid or House Democrats who claim it would get enough Republican votes, plus all the Democrats, to pass the House – never underestimate the power of Tea Party dead-enders in the caucus -- but it would be an interesting test, for all sides.

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President Barack Obama returns from Hawaii Thursday to this increasingly familiar deadline showdown in the nation's capital, with even a stopgap solution now in doubt.

Adding to the mix of developments pushing toward a "fiscal cliff," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner informed Congress on Wednesday that the government was on track to hit its borrowing limit on Monday and that he would take "extraordinary measures as authorized by law" to postpone a government default.

Still, he added, uncertainty over the outcome of negotiations over taxes and spending made it difficult to determine how much time those measures would buy.

In recent days, Obama's aides have been consulting with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's office, but Republicans have not been part of the discussions, suggesting much still needs to be done if a deal, even a small one, were to be struck and passed through Congress by Monday.

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But now, a deadline hard ahead, even derided half-measures are uncertain as President Barack Obama and lawmakers struggle to avert across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that comprise an economy-threatening fiscal cliff.

Congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over a long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been set.

After conferring on a conference call, House Republican leaders said they remain ready for talks, urged the Senate to consider a House-passed bill that extends all existing tax cuts, but gave no hint they intend to call lawmakers back into session unless the Senate first passes legislation.

"The lines of communication remain open, and we will continue to work with our colleagues to avert the largest tax hike in American history, and to address the underlying problem, which is spending," the leadership said in a statement.

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In a letter to congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned that the U.S. will hit the statutory borrowing limit on Monday, but his department will be able to stave off default by engaging in “extraordinary measures" to fund the government and pay off the debt for a brief period of time. Geithner said he could find about $200 billion in “headroom,” which would last about two months under “normal circumstances.” “However, given the significant uncertainty that now exists” with the fiscal cliff, he continued, “it is not possible to predict the effective duration of these measures.”

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According to multiple reports, the main features of the emerging compromise include a tax rate hike on income over $400,000 and new rules for deductions, a jump from 15 to 20 percent in the capital gains rate, an extension of unemployment benefits, the end of the payroll tax holiday, and a change to the cost-of-living formula for Social Security benefits. Further cuts to Medicaid or Medicare, needed to meet Boehner’s demand for more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, would be sorted out by Congress, and both parties would agree to pursue tax reform in the new year. The debt ceiling would also be raised, although the parties remain apart on the duration of the increase. Overall, there’d be about $1.2 trillion in new revenue, with spending cuts of a roughly equal amount.

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The Washington Post reports on the debt ceiling offer:

With the national debt already bumping up against a $16.4 trillion cap set last year, Congress risks a government default unless it acts to raise the debt ceiling in the next few months. Some Republicans had argued that party leaders should use the threat of default to demand additional spending cuts from Obama.

Boehner’s offer signals that he expects a big deal with sufficient savings to meet his demand that any debt limit increase be paired dollar for dollar with spending cuts. That would permit him to keep a key vow to his party — and head off a potentially nasty debt-limit fight — at least until the end of next year.

Over the weekend, Politco and CNN reported that Boehner had also offered to make tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. From CNN:

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Well, obviously Democrats won the election, holding the White House, increasing their lead in the Senate and picking up seats in the House. But while some Republicans promised to commence soul-searching about why most Americans rejected their message, their right-wing flank, and the plutocrats who fund them, are only getting crazier. That leaves victorious Democrats looking for ways to placate them, instead of looking for ways to exercise their mandate. This seems wrong.

I mean, how do you explain the phenomenon of President Obama winning Michigan by 10 points, and the state GOP's very next political move is passing unpopular right-to-work legislation in a lame duck session, before they concede seats to Democrats (and some less crazy Republicans) in January? That flies in the face of the way the political system is supposed to work. The electorate speaks; their servants listen.

But instead, Gov. Rick Snyder, who once promised not to back right-wing right-to-work legislation, instead backed rushing it through, to applause from his friends at ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and the Koch brothers. The point is to slash wages as well as to defund an institutional pillar of the Democratic Party. No retreat, no surrender.

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The legislation would have given President Obama the authority to raise the debt limit on his own, unless Congress could come up with a two-thirds majority to vote to stop him. The bill was based on a proposal McConnell made last year that would give the president “last-choice option” to avoid a default on the nation's debt.

McConnell proposed a vote on the bill this morning, arguing that Democrats wouldn't have the votes to pass it. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., at first declined, but then called McConnell's bluff this afternoon. This time McConnell blocked the vote.

“The Republican leader objects to his own idea,” Reid said. “So I guess we have a filibuster of his own bill.”

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Obama said in remarks to the Business Roundtable that he was aware of reports that Republicans may be willing to agree to higher tax rates on the wealthy as a way to avert the looming "fiscal cliff" and then come back next year with more leverage to extract spending cuts from the White House in exchange for raising the government's borrowing limit.

"That is a bad strategy for America, it's a bad strategy for your businesses and it's not a game that I will play," Obama said, recalling the "catastrophe that happened in August of 2011."

The president's cautionary tone to congressional Republicans came amid a standoff over the looming fiscal cliff, a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for the end of the year that could undermine the nation's economic recovery. Negotiations have focused on whether tax rates for the wealthy should increase, how deeply to cut spending on entitlements such as Medicare and how to deal with raising the government's borrowing limit early next year.

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What is the fiscal cliff?

First of all, it’s not really a cliff (we’ll get to that in a second); rather, it's a series of large tax hikes and spending cuts set to start taking effect in the first few months of the next year -- unless Congress acts to stop it. We’re talking about nearly a $1 trillion in deficit reduction all piled up in the first few months of the year.

Have we been here before?

Good question! Indeed, there have been plenty of times that Congress has faced a deadline when tax cuts would expire or more spending needs to be extended, or the debt ceiling needs to be raised. First, there’s a bunch of things that were set to expire then anyway, as Dec. 31 is a good time to let things end, but what made this the fiscal cliff is that Congress intentionally added a huge set of new problems.

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