REPUBLICANS BEMUSED by White House response to Plan B. “Republicans on Capitol Hill, to put it mildly, were somewhere between shocked and amused by the president’s rejection of their suggestion to spare all but millionaires a tax hike. It was not only that Senate Democrats had voted to do just that in 2010; it was that the threat to reject such a bill if passed by the House rang hollow in the absence of any alternate measure that could pass both houses. So now President Obama was going to hold middle-class taxpayers hostage? Somehow Republicans weren’t buying it.” So pass it and go home.

Plus: “On the House side, Republicans found Sen. Harry Reid’s objection to a proposal he once voted for a bit too much to swallow. A GOP leadership aide wisecracked, ‘Sen. Reid has been a conscientious objector in the Battle of the Fiscal Cliff. It’s time for him to get in the game.’”