Opening Salvos From The Slope

President Obama's opening fiscal cliff slope offer, made through Tim Geithner, was a dose of cold, hard reality for the Republicans.  Naturally they're in full panic mode and screaming to the "liberal media" to punish the President for daring to make such an offer.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday rejected a White House offer to avoid the "fiscal cliff" that would include $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $400 billion in spending cuts and a more permanent increase in the debt ceiling, Republican aides said.

Aides said the offer was made by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Rob Nabors, a top White House adviser, during their meeting with Republican leaders in the Capitol.

While the Obama administration described the offer as reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, Republicans told The Hill its tax increases amount to $600 billion more than what the Democratic-led Senate passed earlier this year when it approved legislation that would allow tax rates on top earners to rise.

“We’ve offered a balanced approach to deal with the fiscal cliff: raising revenue in a way that protects jobs while cutting spending,” said a Republican congressional aide familiar with the proposal. “But, after two weeks of discussions, the offer the White House made today is completely unbalanced and unreasonable, and amounts to little more than reiterating the president’s budget request — which failed to get a single vote in the House or Senate.”

As BooMan suggests, the Republicans are more than a little stunned by the boldness of the offer.  This is what President Obama's second term mandate means for them, and they don't like it a bit. They now know the President isn't bluffing.

The administration is threatening to weaken their ability to obstruct in the Senate or to blow up the economy by holding the debt ceiling hostage, while also demanding their tax hikes on the rich and refusing to offer anything remotely satisfactory (from the Republicans' point of view) in spending cuts.

Give the president what he wants or over the cliff we go. And the GOP gets the blame no matter what happens. Maybe you shouldn't have fucked with the president so much. 

Indeed, GOP meatheads like Newt Gingrich and El Rushbo are already saying the Republicans need to announce they are walking away from the table and that they don't care if the country burns if they go over the cliff slope.

Briar patch.  Just like it's been for the last four years.  Advantage:  Obama.  You can tell he's winning because the usual Village suspects are having a collective heart attack. 

Watch the fun begin.