The Democrats talk too much about their strategy. If you tell the Republicans what you are doing and why it makes it a lot less likely that they’ll fall for your traps. This article in The Hill has way too much stuff in it about how the Democrats know that they are going to fail. Maybe they should try pretending that they’re serious for a moment. The Republicans do it all the time.

Despite the Democrats’ having polls on their side during the debate on tax cuts during the 2010 lame-duck session, Republicans had the political winds at their backs. Obama eventually agreed to extend all the Bush tax rates, including for millionaires, for two years.

Six months later, the Democratic playbook has changed, with a key goal: get Republicans to violate the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) pledge not to raise taxes, which most congressional Republicans have signed.

Democratic strategists hope that after the GOP officials receive a pummeling over millionaires’ tax rates, they’ll be more willing to accept ending tax breaks for major oil conglomerates and companies that relocate factories to foreign countries. ATR says both proposals would violate the pledge.

In a letter to lawmakers ahead of Tuesday evening’s vote, ATR President Grover Norquist argued that deductions that oil companies claim are not subsidies, stating, “Every deduction or credit [the bill] proposes to revoke or limit has a specific purpose common throughout the tax code.”

Forty Senate Republicans have signed the ATR pledge to oppose “any and all” increases to personal and business marginal income tax rates, as well as “any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits” unless it is matched by other tax-rate decreases.

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge, Democrats charge, is standing in the way of a grand bargain on raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

The Republicans are impervious to pummeling over taxes. They will shut down the government, default on the debt, and blow up the world before they’ll make Grover Norquist unhappy. I suppose we can test my theory, but even electoral defeat doesn’t moderate the GOP.