Minority Leader John Boehner was doing fairly well up to now in positioning his party for the election and shaping an agenda. He drew the White House into a spat in Ohio, called for the resignation of the Obama economic team, and put forth a two-point plan (spending cuts and no tax hikes). Then, on Sunday he muddied the waters on Face the Nation:

If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below, of course I’m going to do that. … But I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.

Did he let the Democrats off the hook — give away too much? After all, doesn’t he have a shot at ensuring that Nancy Pelosi be the one with only one option?

I suspect you’ll see some push back this week. It is not a good idea to give your opponents an escape hatch and I bet conservatives in and out of office will wonder why Boehner seems to be doing just that. An unnamed Boehner aide tried to explain the gambit:

Despite what Obama says, Republicans are not holding middle-class tax cuts hostage, and we’re not going to let him get away with those types of false claims. Our focus remains on getting bipartisan support for a freeze on all current rates, because that is what is best for the economy and small-business job creation. Boehner’s words were calculated to deprive Obama of the ability to continue making those false claims, and as a result, we are in a better position rhetorically to pressure more Democrats to support a full freeze.

Uh, I think the way to put pressure on the president is to not give him what he wants without a fight. And by the end of the day, Boehner seemed to be toughening up, putting out a statement that read, in part, “If the president is serious about job creation, there’s a clear way forward, and that’s for us to come together and pass legislation immediately that cuts spending to 2008 levels for the next year and stops all of the coming tax hikes by freezing all current tax rates for the next two years. Anything short of that may selfishly check a political box for the president, but it fails the American people.” Precisely right — so it’s hard to see the purpose of his remarks on Face the Nation.