Moving, I suppose but considering what the final deal was and the terrible position they were in to negotiate, why didn't they except one of Obama's deals? Especially that last one.

Plan 3 was the best, but oh well...I guess the debt will never be paid off.

What are you talking about? Aside from Obama's plans wanting to extend some of the Tax Stimulus stuff, their plans look fairly similar every single time.

The fact that the agreed upon plan looks so far from both the Obama and Boehner plans is what I find truly shocking.

"Hey guys, we can't agree on minor differences over a 10 year budget cut, so instead of cutting out 2.5 trillion, lets only cut out 750 billion. Oh and instead of fairly equal portions coming from cuts and tax increases, lets just make it 80% tax increases and only 20% cuts..."

The party system in government is what ruins this country. Career politicians are what ruins this country. How about we make EVERY political office have a maximum of 2 terms or 8 years like the presidency? There is a reason we don't allow presidents to have more than 2 terms, because abuse/lust of power, corruption, etc grows deeper with time.

please, the final deal was only a barebones sidestep of the cliff. Obama has already said he wants to talk cuts. The previous cases were just too complicated to pass, especially with the deadline looming.
But just goes to show you that republicans can't see a good deal when they have one. Obama 3 looked a hell of a lot better than what we ended up with. Conservatives should see this chart and feel ashamed that they stonewalled a much better deal than the one they ended up with.

Yes, for sure. It's like they were pulling up in a car together to make out cliff but instead got into a couple's fight, one of them stepped out of the car towards the cliff and tripped, revealing a rocky path down the side, took it and the other followed them still arguing.

lol
i slightly prefer the imagery of them fighting in one of those rolling balls of dust formations though.

It's pretty simple really, the blue is what Obama wanted, the Red what the republicans wanted.  The cuts Obama wanted were nothing more but concessions to the republicans, just like the tax increases were concessions to the democrats.

The blame doesn't lie on the Republicans in general as much as the Norquist folks in particular. It was obvious that if Boehner had just pushed an up-down vote on any one of those earlier solutions, enough moderate Republicans plus the Democrats would have gotten it through, but he fears party revolt from the minarchist fringe

American voters on the whole would have looked much more kindly on the Republicans as a whole, had they simply acted (giving the Republicans political capital to make more meaningful spending reforms down the line), while the loonier edge of the right continues to hold the country hostage, and its own party, too.