First Read on the tax issue:
For the White House, the upside of this tax battle is that it elevates Boehner, and they hope it also draws more attention to the tough New York Times front-page story on the man who might be speaker. (“He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS,” the paper wrote yesterday.) But the spat also has a potential downside for Team Obama, in that it makes Boehner look like he’s the one who is compromising.
The only way Boehner and the Republicans could be cast as compromising while the White House is rigid and uncompromising would be if we lived in a country where the media had completely fallen down on the job and failed to accurately point out that the Republicans have opposed everything the Democrats and the WH have proposed for two years and then voted “No” on a straight party ticket for 99% of the votes.
In other words, it is probably inevitable that Boehner will come out looking like the one who is compromising.