Young Broder in Training falls for the good-cop, bad-cop ransom routine

. - by New Deal democrat

I can only hope that Ezra Klein was not acting as a mouthpiece for the Administration when he wrote this morning that the House GOP's latest ransom note was kinda, sorta reasonable.

The GOP has pulled a classic good-cop, bad-cop routine in the last few days. First, Mich McConnell, the good cop, gets Senate Democrats to agree to an outer edge of the envelope deal, that isn't quite a ransom. Then John Boehner, the bad cop, makes a few additional demands that don't look so different fron what Reid has already consented to. This is a classic nudge, hoping the other negotiating party is so exhausted that they simply throw in the towel for the new, additional demands.

Does the latest House plan reward the GOP for its hostage-taking? You betcha!

Let me put this another way: this deal only extends the debt limit for 4 months. Have you seen anything in the House GOP behavior in the last 48 hours that gives the slightest indication that they won't be back with a new set of ransom demands when next February rolls around? The only way to end the hostage-taking is to call their bluff (if my out-of-the-box proposal is off the table).

We have reached the end of the line. President Obama should announce that he is going to Camp David, where he will remain incommunicado until tomorrow night. At that point he will return to the White House, and there will either be a clean bill on his desk, or the US defaults.