Stopped reading there. Survival? How? There's no survival for anyone if you vote for raising taxes on an economy snowballing downhill. What does it matter who will be blamed next week, when the next election is two years from now? Who knows what will explode before then. And you know something will.
No taxes. No deal. In fact, no taxes on anything the House doesn't like. This is a war. If you have no position, you have no base on which to fight and eventually win.
Sometimes pragmatists can be very impractical.
Bump. This is a straight-up staring contest. Republicans must not blink, or they open the door to 50-60% taxation levels on everybody -- once they give up the principle Obama is trying to get them to give up.