Life Inside Boehner's Box

Apparently there are subtleties in the Payroll Tax debacle underway right now. The Democrats might even help Boehner get out of his box. Whatever. At least the Democrats have the luxury of saying yea or nay, for whatever reasons they please, without paying much of a price:

The Boehner office is arguing that the right way to negotiate this compromise -- perhaps the only way to do it -- is a "conference committee." The two parties from the two chambers appoint negotiators to sit in a room and work out a deal.

...Boehner's choice of a conference committee is an interesting one. As congressional scholar Sarah Binder writes, conference committees have become rarer as party leaderships have become stronger.

...What her analysis implies is that insisting on a conference committee serves three purposes for Boehner. First, it offloads the compromises on a coalition of negotiators who come from different wings of the House Republicans. That protects Boehner in the final agreement. Second, it creates a procedural argument that distracts from the underlying disagreement: House Republicans won't want to extend the payroll tax cut except in the absence of extraordinary policy concessions, like the immediate greenlighting of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Third, it lets Boehner spend some time standing up to the Senate and the president who are trying to rush a compromise through the House -- a move that perhaps gives him some political capital he can spend on the ultimate compromise, as he'll have proven to House Republicans that he didn't capitulate at the first sign of pressure.