BETWEEN A REPUBLICAN AND A HARD PLACE

President Obama has insisted that a long-term solution to the nation's borrowing limit be included in a deal to avert the automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that will come January 1 if the president and Congress don't reach an agreement. But Republicans have clung to the debt limit as their sole leverage in the negotiations. "The debt limit ought to be used to bring fiscal sanity to Washington, DC," John Boehner said at a press briefing on Thursday.

There are a number of points on which Obama needs to stand firm during the fiscal-cliff negotiations. The new tax rates could decide federal revenue for decades, and the president must hold his ground on increasing the Medicare eligibility age. But the debt limit could prove to be the most important aspect of any deal. The past two years of Obama's presidency have been dominated by a string of crises constructed by congressional Republicans, who've threatened to crash the U.S. economy to achieve their goals. The next four years will fall into the same pattern if he doesn't use the political capital of his recent re-election to remove the GOP's ability to use the debt ceiling as a means to take the government hostage.