Remarkable clarity at week's end

Count LITD in with the range of pundits - from Rush to Krauthammer - that say what absolutely is called for is for Pubs to step completely away from the table.  We're dealing with out-and-out wackos.

Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ distills the utter unseriousness of the FHers:

How to put this tax-and-more-spending offer in perspective? It is far in excess of what the Democrats asked for in last year's debt-limit standoff—when the political configuration in Washington was exactly the same. It is far more than the president's own Democratic Senate has ever been able to pass, even with a filibuster-proof majority. It is far more than the president himself campaigned on this year.

I was none too keen about Boehner's early-November mutterings about "revenue" being "on the table," but at least he put Pubs on record as having tried one last time to arrive at something at least minimally serious:

Within two days of the election, Mr. Boehner had offered an enormous compromise, committing the GOP to provide new tax revenue, through limits on deductions for the wealthy. Mr. Obama campaigned on making "the rich" pay more—and that is exactly what Mr. Boehner agreed to give him.

All that was left for the president to do was accept this peace offering, pair it with necessary spending cuts, and take credit for averting a crisis. Mr. Obama has instead spent the past weeks campaigning for tax-rate hikes. He wants the revenue, but collected only the way he chooses. And on the basis of that ideological insistence alone, the nation is much closer to a crisis. 

So, yeah, the way to proceed is to quit answering the phone when it's a Freedom-Hater calling, and then go on a PR mega-blitz, letting the American people know that the MEC and Harry Reid are holding a gun to America's head because they perceive an opportunity to destroy the Republican party.