Story of Plan O – Boehner and Co.'s failed attempt to meet the challenge of Obama’s victory
from National Journal: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress-legacy/the-gop-s-failed-plan-o-inside-the-fiscal-cliff-saga-20130102?page=1
____Last fall, as members of Congress were home campaigning and America’s attention was focused on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, top aides to House Speaker John Boehner huddled to devise a winning strategy for the looming fiscal cliff . . .
Boehner’s aides prepared two blueprints: a “Romney Wins” and an “Obama Wins” scenario. A Romney win – Plan R - would generate less pressure: The new Republican president would make his thinking known, and Boehner would follow his lead. But the calculus changed, fundamentally, if Obama won reelection and the Senate stayed in Democratic hands. Boehner would then be the nation’s leading Republican elected official. It would be up to him to counter the president, oppose huge tax hikes, and resolve the fiscal cliff. He would have to act boldly--and quickly.
This is the story of Plan O – the congressional Republicans’ failed attempt to meet the challenge of Obama’s victory. It begins in September and ends in the fiasco of the Christmas season, when the speaker was repudiated by his own troops and had to pull his last, desperate solution from the House floor, leaving Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to cut the best deal he could with dramatically diminished leverage.
In the end, despite all the planning and forethought, Boehner would stand almost helplessly by as the nation plunged off the fiscal cliff, and a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and centrist Republicans voted to give Obama the big tax hikes he demanded on the wealthy. House Republicans saw the worst of all worlds: they failed to save tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, put no new checks on government spending, and showed themselves a fractious and disorganized opposition party, the governance of which in the new Congress will prove to be a serious test.
read more: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress-legacy/the-gop-s-failed-plan-o-inside-the-fiscal-cliff-saga-20130102?page=1
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