Well, that didn’t take long at all. After signaling yesterday that he would focus on producing a smaller debt reduction, today John Boehner is retreating to the hard-line Tea Party position again: Boehner says ‘no’ to ambitious debt-reduction deal.

This shows us two things: 1) the real power in today’s Republican Party is in the hands of ideological extremists, and 2) the GOP does not care about jobs or the deficit; their top priority is preserving low taxes for the super-rich.