This budget deal is what GOP surrender looks like

By Philip Klein, Philip Klein

Published December 20, 2015

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During the era of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, it's become popular in conservative circles to blast Republican leadership for surrendering.

These charges, in my view, were often not fair. I argued that the debt ceiling had to be raised, government had to be funded, and that it would have been impossible to extend all of the Bush tax cuts following President Obama's re-election. As much as I've opposed Obamacare, I disagreed tactically with Obamacare opponents who believed it would be possible to stop the program without control of the White House through a "defunding" push. In other words, I'm not one to use the term "surrender" loosely.

But now that I've had a chance to dig through the details of the budget deal Boehner announced Tuesday morning, I'm comfortable saying: This is what Republican surrender looks like.