A couple of days ago Ezra Klein attempted to clarify House Republicans' latest tantrum:
The single most important thing to understand about the ongoing debate over the payroll tax cut is that it’s not about the payroll tax cut.... Rather, Democrats and Republicans are arguing over the price Democrats are willing to pay and Republicans are willing to accept in order to extend the payroll tax cut for a full year. Republicans want, among other things, the Keystone XL Pipeline and further cuts to discretionary spending.
Understood, as far as that goes. Yet were this President McCain asking for a one-year or two-month or friggin' decade-long payroll tax cut, would House Republicans object? Would they burden any such bill with extraneous demands for this and that? Of course not.
It is House Republicans who insist the "ongoing debate" is indeed about the payroll tax cut, and, indeed as well, that somewhat duplicitous insistence is what has defined (which Ezra Klein failed to clarify) not only Republican tactics, but this entire debate. And the debate isn't really about those "other things" -- "the Keystone XL Pipeline and further cuts to discretionary spending." It is instead, quite simply, about denying President Obama a commonsensical, Keynesian band-aid to a limping economy.
It is about denying President Obama, period.