New liberal ads: Don’t sell out to the GOP on the Bush tax cuts, Obama!

A little late evening schadenfreude from MoveOn and Bold Progressives for Change via HuffPo and RCP, respectively. Gibbs hinted to Stephanopoulos this morning on GMA that a temporary across-the-board extension of the tax cuts is on the table, so consider these vids a sneak preview of the liberal shirt-rending to come. One ominous question, though: What’s The One’s price for agreeing to an extension of the cuts? Is it, as Stephanopoulos suggested, merely approval of the START treaty? Or, as Mickey Kaus fears, is it something worse? Per Kaus’s link, a snippet from Congressional Quarterly:

Yes, House Democrats are likely to flex their shrinking muscles with a vote this week to allow taxes to increase on income above $200,000. But that’s just a symbolic prelude. Both congressional Democratic negotiators are inclined to cut deals that appeal to the party’s centrists, while neither Kyl nor Camp has the slightest interest in abandoning the rich in the tax cut debate. (Orrin Hatch, the incoming top Republican on Senate Finance, might have been.)

But the tax talkers are not limited to talking only about taxes, and the fact that Obama has put two of his top people in the room means he’s committed to winning something in return for giving in to the GOP on the lower rates — the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” for example, or the arms control treaty or maybe even Reid’s immigration bill. All 42 Senate Republicans signaled as much today, in a letter vowing to block any lame-duck legislation until they get their way on taxes (but hinting they’d be open to deal elsewhere if they do get their way).

I maintain that there’s no way the GOP’s about to sign off on an amnesty mere weeks after a crop of tea party legislators were elected on the promise of forging a new, more conservative Republican Party. Even David Frum thinks the bill is loathsome; if that’s not all the cover centrist senators need to walk away from it, I don’t know what is. It’s going to be a tax cuts/START treaty compromise, I think. I think.

Blowback