In the last and biggest political test of a wild year — Boehner’s final exam for 2012 — the House speaker has shown yet again that he doesn’t have the juice to whip his troops into line. If anything, it is rank-and-file House Republicans who are continually snapping their leader back to the pack when he gets too far out in front of them.

His plans change with their whims, the latest of which is to escalate a battle with a nearly unified Senate and President Barack Obama over a two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut, welfare and unemployment programs, and current Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors…

But the best outcome for House Republicans is that they extract a measure of pain from the Senate, forcing minor concessions in a negotiation where the major sticking point between the two sides is whether the extension of expiring laws lasts for two months or 11 months. Facing vocal opposition from the president, Democrats and even some of their fellow Republicans in the Senate, Republicans could take a shellacking in the court of public opinion even if they manage to rewrite the bill.

Either way, they’re playing into Obama’s plans to run against the widely and deeply unpopular Congress.