After two years of shutting Republicans out of the actual negations over the historic spending bills (the so-called Recovery Act and Obamacare), now, suddenly Mr. Post Partisan is willing to negotiate on the so-called "Bush tax cuts."

Republican leaders, why do you suppose that is? It's because Obama is holding a pair of queens while the Republicans have a royal flush.

Rather than agreeing to one additional dime of federal spending, the Republicans should have called Obama's bluff.

John Boehner could have provided a single-sentence press release for his reason to not negotiate. It might have sounded something like The Democrat-controlled Congress has been derelict in its Constitutional duty to pass a budget in 2010 and therefore we will not speak of more federal spending until we have a budget.

Recognizing their position of strength during the negotiations, the Republicans should have demanded tax cuts for the middle class while keeping the tax rates the same for the "rich."

That would really have put Obama in a predicament.

At the very most, the Republicans, maybe, should have been willing to keep and review the current tax rates in a couple of years (without agreeing to any federal spending).

The Republicans had (still have) the perfect opportunity to stop additional federal spending while placing the burden of increasing taxes squarely on Obama.

If Obama had even thought of allowing the tax rates to increase for everyone, the Republicans should have dared him to do so.

But instead, what are we seeing? The Republicans are willing to allow the Democrats to continue to spend like Parris Hilton; except without any reasonable basis to pay for the excess.

I like how Hugh Hewitt sums up the indiscretion of the Republican leaders: "‘The deal' spends billions and billions of dollars that the country does not have in order to prevent a tax hike that the country voted against."