And this is from the Liberal Politico....Once again the Republicans were telling the truth...Obama was lying...

Debt story tally: John Boehner 1, Obama 0

By JAKE SHERMAN | 3/18/12 8:17 PM EDT

The verdict is in: Team Boehner has taken Round One of the great journalistic reconstruction of last year’s failed debt talks.

Eight months after deficit talks collapsed between the nation’s top two elected officials, a 4,600-word inside-the-room narrative by The Washington Post on Sunday — the first of several sweeping accounts in the works — paints the Obama administration as walking away from a nearly-done agreement with Boehner. And when the president eventually came around and wanted to cut a deal, Boehner said it was too late.

In short, the Post piece bolsters the Boehner team’s narrative that it was Obama who got cold feet and became unwilling to strike a grand bargain to fix the nation’s finances.

“The story makes it clear that the facts are as we’ve always described them,” said Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman, in a Sunday interview. “The speaker showed a great deal of courage by putting $800 billion in revenues through tax reform on the table, and the White House couldn’t close the deal. They moved the goal posts and refused to get serious.”

The White House declined to talk about the story on the record. But senior advisers have long maintained it was GOP intransigence and Boehner’s inability to round up votes from his members that scuttled the deal.

The efforts by several prominent journalists to revisit last year’s high-stakes talks —the New York Times Magazine’s Matt Bai is working on a similar piece, and Bob Woodward is writing a book on Obama’s handling of the economy — promise sustained attention on a critical moment of Obama’s first term that could factor into his reelection prospects.

The negotiations with House Republicans were Obama’s clearest opportunity to realize his 2008 campaign pledge to usher in a more productive, bipartisan era in Washington — a promise that critical independent voters are bound to remember in November. The president has since pivoted to make a more concerted appeal to the Democratic base, blasting what he calls intransigent Republicans at every opportunity.

But in the Post’s version of events, Obama is portrayed as getting spooked by a backlash from the left if he pulled the trigger. And former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley provided surprising, on-the-record support of the GOP’s insistence that the president deserves blame for losing his will.

Daley said the White House privately fretted that Democrats would go ballistic if the president agreed to $800 billion in new tax revenues when some Republican senators had signaled willingness to go along with as much as $2 trillion.

“The Democratic leaders already thought we were idiot negotiators,” Daley said, according to the story. “So I called [Boehner Chief of Staff] Barry [Jackson] and said, ‘What are we going to do here? How are we going to sell Democrats to take $800 billion when Republican senators have signed on to” nearly $2 trillion.

“I don’t think it was a mischaracterization on our part to say we’d be beat up miserably by Democrats who thought we got out-negotiated,” Daley added.

In truth, there’s little substantively new in the Post’s account of the failed talks to hike the debt ceiling, cut spending and alter entitlements. Nearly all of the proposals traded — and countered — were reported in the days and weeks after the deal collapsed. At that time, with both sides still smarting from failure, proposals were shared by anonymous Capitol Hill and administration aides, both trying to paint their bosses in the best light.

But the level of participation of sources who usually refuse to talk on the record gave the account a more genuine feel.

In addition to Daley, Boehner’s top aide Jackson spoke to the Post. Jackson made an exception to his mantra, as described by those close to him, that staffers should never be in the news.

Offices shared emails — including one from Boehner aide Brett Loper — and drafts of legislative proposals.

Notes were provided to the newspaper. Moments of munching muffins and checking BlackBerrys were described. Overall, it was the most detailed portrayal thus far.

The view from Capitol Hill — from allies and foes of the speaker alike — is that the story is a victory for Boehner. Although his team didn’t pitch the piece, it showed him as something of a martyr — a man willing to put his speakership in jeopardy for the good of the country.

Twenty years ago, a story like this would land on doorsteps inside-the-Beltway with a bang. But the speed of news today forces much of this information out earlier, and a tick-tock of year-old events allows both sides to fill in details to give the story more texture.

For both sides, the coming behind-the-scenes yarns hold huge — but different — political ramifications for the two men. Immediately, the narrative of Washington’s failure to wrestle down the debt is more important for Obama to own. He is up for reelection in November, while Boehner has to run in his cozy and conservative western Ohio district.

But for Boehner, the collapse of the talks will figure into his legacy. And for an institutionalist who has spent his career trying to become speaker, stories like this help define him and his time in the Capitol.

— Carrie Budoff Brown contributed to this report