The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

News of the Tautological

  • “Canceled Game Won’t be Resumed”–headline, ESPN.com, Nov. 28
  • “Fire Marshal: Church Was Torched by Arsonist”–headline, WCVB-TV website (Boston), Nov. 30

We Hope They Weren’t Transferred to a Plainclothes Division
“Transferred Minneapolis Cops Lose Suit”–headline, Star Tribune, Nov. 30

Groundhog Day
Well, this is familiar, isn’t it? The Wall Street Journal reports that “President Barack Obama made an opening bid in budget talks with Republicans that calls for a $1.6 trillion tax increase, $50 billion in infrastructure spending in 2013 and new power to raise the federal debt limit, a provocative set of demands that Republicans said represented a step backward in efforts to avoid looming tax increases and spending cuts.”

The Weekly Standard reports that “Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says he ‘burst into laughter’ Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined the administration proposal.” Tears might have been more appropriate, but the line between comedy and tragedy is a fine one.

Peggy Noonan writes:

You watch and wonder: Why does it always have to be cliffs with this president? Why is it always a high-stakes battle? Why doesn’t he shrewdly re-enact Ronald Reagan, meeting, arguing and negotiating in good faith with Speaker Tip O’Neill, who respected very little of what the president stood for and yet, at the end of the day and with the country in mind, could shake hands and get it done? Why is there never a sense with Mr. Obama that he understands the other guys’ real position?

It’s not as if Mr. Boehner and the Republicans wouldn’t deal.

Perhaps the answer lies in this National Journal piece: “Senate Democratic leaders swaggered in front of the cameras today to confidently predict that Republicans will eventually come around to the idea of raising tax rates on the wealthy and preventing tax hikes on the middle class.”

And indeed, how can they not come around to it? With taxes going up automatically to 2000 levels at the end of the year, Obama effectively has the unilateral power to raise taxes. The only leverage House Republicans have is that their support is needed to avoid raising taxes on those who aren’t “rich” by Obama’s lights.

Republicans can give Obama what he wants and raise taxes only on “the rich.” Or they can raise taxes on everyone, which would also give Obama what he wants and allow him to blame them for the tax increases he opposes. A third alternative would be some sort of negotiated deal, but by making such an outlandish “offer,” Obama essentially takes that possibility off the table.

It may not speak well for Obama’s leadership, but as a matter of political tactics, he seems to have played this brilliantly.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”