That would accomplished nothing. Obama would have been happy with no deal at all, higher taxes for everybody, and the Pubs would get the blame. Obama was holding all the cards, the pubs were negotiating from a position of weakness, and everyone knew it. I'm actually surprised they got as good a deal as they did.
Your right Obama was holding all the cards. The GOP gave them to him when they passed the bill that created the cliff in the first place.
Low expectations are what have gotten us into a hole so unfathomably deep.
We have low expectations from our representatives and they do even less, then we re-elect them.
At some point in time after careful observation, you might begin to detect a pattern.