Wall Street Journal editorial, Boehner’s Tax Bungle: The House GOP Leader Steps Into Obama’s Trap:

President Obama has made House Minority Leader John Boehner his campaign bogeyman, and maybe the criticism is getting to the Ohio Republican. How else to explain Mr. Boehner’s weekend blundering into the tax trap the President set for him only last week? …

The possibility of a pre-election bipartisan stampede to extend the tax rates at least to 2013 has been building for weeks. Or at least it was until Mr. Boehner rode to the President’s rescue on Sunday, with a pre-emptive bow to Mr. Obama’s tax increase strategy. “If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below, of course I’m going to do that,” Mr. Boehner told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” The Republican immediately added that he’d “fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans,” but by then the damage was done. …

Republicans scrambled yesterday to regain their footing, with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor returning to the winning GOP argument that any tax hike on “working families, small-business people and investors” is a “non-starter.” We hope so. As for Mr. Boehner, this stumble on the easy issue of taxation in the best GOP year since 1994 makes us wonder if he’s ready for prime time.