Boehner Falls Off His Horse

It’s enough to make a cowboy cry, seeing the Speaker drop the reins and let himself be pulled off his debt-deal mount by the Tea Party drunks in D.C.

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground,” John Boehner sobs, climbing down from a Grand Bargain, “the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure...”

In this new definition of horse’s-ass leadership, the GOP chief is tethered to the “tax hike” post by his own deputy, Eric Cantor, and the rowdies behind him.

A White House spokesman responds regretfully, “Both parties have made real progress thus far, and to back off now will not only fail to solve our fiscal challenge, it will confirm the cynicism people have about politics in Washington. The president believes that now is the moment to rise above that cynicism and show the American people that we can still do big things.”

But you can’t do that riding backward.

Update: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on “Face the Nation” restates the reality:

“I have to write 80 million checks a month to Americans, including 55 million Americans who depend on their Social Security check. We have to make principal payments or roll over $500 billion of debt in the month of August, about $87 billion in that first week in August.

“If they don’t act, then we face catastrophic damage to the American economy and the leadership, to their credit, and I mean Republicans and Democrats, fully understand that.”

If they do, why are they still horsing around?