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Yesterday, there was a very public civil war in the Republican Party over House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to block a vote on aid for Hurricane Sandy victims. But today, when Boehner’s Speakership is up for a vote – and just 17 GOP dissenters could derail it - Fox News pulled out their all-purpose Republican Rehab strategy: blame President Obama. But it didn't work as well with Michelle Malkin as they'd surely hoped.

In one of several Fox & Friends segments with the same theme, Steve Doocy sneered that President Obama, now "back on vacation in Hawaii," had promised “at a photo op with Chris Christie” that he was going to “eliminate the red tape” and “make sure FEMA follows through” with aid to Sandy victims. Doocy continued, “And now, 60 days later, nothing.” As he spoke, a banner on the screen read, “JUST A PHOTO OP: GOP gets hammered, but not the president.”

Doocy played a mashup video of Obama talking about getting the relief job done, “Just for people who have missed that."

Afterward, Doocy whined, “Then people on Capitol Hill are trying to blame Boehner when he was looking at that Senate bill that was loaded up with a bunch of pork.”

Although she jumped at the opportunity for jeering with a “golf clap” and an “Aloha and mahalo” over President Obama’s “Oscar-winning performance,” to her credit, Malkin did not let Boehner or Republicans off the hook. “I think it’s ridiculous to FULLY (her emphasis) blame Boehner for the gridlock that’s happening over this bill,” she said. She added:

And the context for the spat I think doesn’t bode well for the Republican leadership because although there are die-hard, committed fiscal conservatives who are sincerely opposing this bill because of the pork, the context for this battle was, apparently, a snit fit between Boehner and Canter over how the fiscal cliff vote went down… There were tweets and messages coming out of Capitol Hill late on Sunday that the bill was pulled because of the resentment between those two boiling over.

And so there’s a lot of intrigue going on there. In the meantime, the usual pork-stuffed, emergency relief bill is finally being torn apart – not so much by Republicans on Capitol Hill as conservative watchdogs and activists who’ve been blowing the whistle on all of the piggy porky stuff that’s put into this bill that’s supposed to be for Sandy victims but ends up benefitting Guantanamo Bay, fisheries in Alaska, Head Start.

In other words, Fox can try to smooth things over for Boehner and Republicans by pointing a finger at President Obama but the rifts in the party are real and deep and unlikely to go away any time soon.

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There has been a lot of chaos caused in Congress and to the American people ever since the teaBirchers took over the House in 2010, but some unintentional good things have happened because of them. In 2011, Speaker of the House, John Boehner was forced to turn down an incredible Grand Bargain deal for the Republicans over the dreary debt ceiling debacle. Included in the deal was drastic cuts to to federal spending as well as entitlement cuts.

Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount.

So approximately sixteen months later Obama wins reelection campaigning on tax increases and guess what? Boehner and the entire GOP got zilch for their troubles. I can tell you I was very happy when Boehner rejected that God awful deal. Now with the fiscal cliff looming in a matter of hours, Obama offered Boehner and the GOP a massive cut to Social Security benefits that they've been clamoring for by offering to switch to the chained CPI method of calculating Social Security payouts in exchange for making a deal on raising tax rates which has been a demand by the GOP and they turned him down once again.

Tense "fiscal cliff" negotiations on Capitol Hill Sunday inched forward slightly as Republican senators agreed to take Social Security cuts off their list of immediate demands.The cut that GOP leaders had proposed -- picking up on a now-defunct offer from President Barack Obama -- involved basing Social Security cost-of-living adjustments on a chained consumer price index (CPI), which grows more slowly than current measures of inflation and therefore would give seniors less in benefits as time went on. But Senate Republicans realized in a caucus meeting Sunday afternoon that the idea was a loser for now, even if they might return to it in reaching a larger deal later on.

"CPI has to be off the table because it's not a winning argument to say benefits for seniors versus tax breaks for rich people," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We need to take CPI off the table -- that's not part of the negotiations -- because we can't win an argument that has Social Security for seniors versus taxes for the rich.”

"There's a realization that in spite of the president's apparent endorsement of a chained CPI that that proposal deserves more study," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). "My guess, based on what Democrats are saying is that that reform would not happen during this stage of the negotiations."

Every day we don't cut The Big Three is a good day, no matter who is responsible for it. In the above video which was supplied to me by the lovely Heather of Video Cafe, Sen. Jon Thune tries to explain to Dana Bash of CNN why Republicans are now refusing to include chained CPI in the current deal for the fiscal cliff.

Thune: The one thing that is a, you know, Democrats have come out and made a big deal out of chained CPI; Republicans are very concerned that if that not be used as an offset to reduce or to replace some of the spending cuts that would occur in the sequester, that Democrats put forward an alternative.

And so this is a process. Obviously, there's a lot of give and take going on right now, but Republicans don't want to see new revenues, in other words, Democrat tax increases, be used for new spending. So that's sort of where many of our members have drawn the line right now.

BASH: And that is where it seems to be one of the big roadblocks are right now. You all want to use what's known as chained CPI, which is a technical -- I won't get into it now but it would effectively really affect Social Security recipients to replace the sequester, which is $100 billion in cuts. And Democrats want to use new revenue from tax increases to replace the sequester.

Is that where you see it?

THUNE: Well, I think that's a -- that -- yes, I mean, there are other issues involved but that's certainly one example of something I think where -- and frankly, I mean, chained CPI to us is not just about replacing the sequester today. It is putting in place a policy that will help save and protect Social Security in the long term.

But that being said, if Democrats don't accept that as an offset, then come up with something else, because raising taxes to pay for new spending is not something that Republicans believe, this debate ought to be about. It ought to be about reducing the deficit and the debt. And what they are essentially suggesting is we want new taxes, we want higher taxes on people in this country to pay for new spending.

If you can make heads or tails from Thune's explanation of it, he does say that Republicans do want to use C-CPI savings to replace the sequester, so earlier arguments about saving the benefit program is a lie.

What's also unfortunate is that President Obama bragged about including chained CPI in his fiscal deal offer to Dancing David Gregory on Sunday.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: ...but I already have, David, as you know, one of the proposals we made was something called Chain CPI, which sounds real technical but basically makes an adjustment in terms of how inflation is calculated on Social Security. Highly unpopular among Democrats. Not something supported by AARP. But in pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long-term I'm willing to make those decisions.

A Democratic president should never, ever offer this up to Republicans. Chained CPI doesn't strengthen Social Security at all. It cuts benefits for all seniors depending on it to survive as they get older. Luckily the GOP's tortured logic took hold over them and they nixed the proposal.

Now we have to help make sure President Obama and Congressional Democrats do not roll over during the looming debt ceiling vote and try to give away the store. Heck, they've tried before.

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Pity Paul Ryan. Not only is he one of the least popular member of his party and Congress, but his Randian wet dream budget plan--declared the litmus test for all Republicans this election--isn't fooling most Americans. So much so that even Ryan is backing away from it.

And now politicians aspiring to join the Republicans on the national scene have to figure out a way to be for the Ryan plan to satisfy the party leadership and yet not be for a plan that most Americans hate. George "Macaca" Allen has repeatedly resisted answering whether he would support it although by his own words, politicians should answer how they will vote.

But perhaps the most telling episode came from Florida Republican Mike Haridopolos, who appeared on the conservative Ray Junior radio show in Orlando and gave such mealy-mouthed answers with the typical politician filibuster to issues he did want to talk about that even Junior got fed up and kicked him off his show.

Poor Mike tried to do the GOP duck and dodge, but the conservative radio host, “Ray Junior”, was having none of it.

Ray Junior pointed out that it was Mikey who brought up budget in the first place, and the voters needed to know how Mikey was going to vote. Mikey claimed that the Ryan budget was hypothetical, so he couldn’t answer, but in general, he’s “for” a balanced budget. But then Ray hooked him by pointing out that every candidate has to answer hypothetical questions.

Cue the confusion. Perhaps Mikey only got the Fox News training, but for whatever reason, he was woefully unprepared to answer real questions and seemed rather piqued at being asked for real solutions, as if this were an affront.

The Orlando based Ray Junior Show touts itself as “…the best in bold, conservative talk. America’s Loose Cannon, Ray Junior, has no fear of telling the truth, no matter which party it hurts or who it aggravates.”

Love it. And this should be the rallying cry of all Democrats as we near the election: demand that Republicans stand with destroying Medicare as we know it with the Ryan plan. The voters will know how to act.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been leading the Democratic charge for protecting Medicare . Earlier in the week in an interview with ABC she made it clear: benefit cuts “absolutely” off the table :

Pelosi said that cuts to seniors' benefits are "absolutely" off the table in the ongoing deficit reduction negotiations, but suggested that Congress could improve Medicare by working to eliminate fraud and also by giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services unilateral authority to negotiate for lower prices for the endangered entitlement program.

"When you talk about Medicare, the first thing I would do if I ruled the world would be to allow the secretary of HHS to negotiate for lower prices. That would save tens of billions of dollars," Pelosi said. "The last place we need to go—we don't ever have to go there—is to what the Republicans are doing: Eliminate Medicare [and] make seniors pay more for less as you give tax breaks to big oil and say that's how we have to reduce the deficit. We don't subscribe to that."

On Friday, Leader Pelosi was joined by two key Democratic Senators from the other side of the Hill. Senators Tom Harkin and Jack Reed also fired at the Republicans with the same message: Take Medicare off the table!

"Our message," Harkin said, "is simply: Take Medicare off the table. Let's solve the default crisis. And let's talk about fixing the system so that our middle class has a little bit better shape."

"Medicare is such a complicated, complex topic," Reed said. "To do it right, this is not the proper arena for that kind of debate."

Give Democrats a lot of credit here for being totally in sync with each other. This is happening at the same time when President Barack Obama is pledging to stay firm against extension of Bush tax cuts (hope he can hold the line this time). As everyone knows by now the job numbers came out today which should serve as a “wake-up call” for all elected officials in DC. These guys need to drop their obsession with austerity and get back to what really matters to all of us: creating jobs in our communities.

Good to see at least number of prominent Democrats stepping up and not falling for the hostage taking shenanigans of Congressional Republicans. Let’s hope they stay firm. This is not the time to blink.