Today Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) decided he’d try to break the debt ceiling deadlock by giving up all the hostages he’s thought he’s held and proposing Obama take ownership of the debt limit and raise it on his own. Here’s how he explained it:

The way it would work is the legislation would authorize him to get to the amount he says he needs based upon the advice of his Secretary of the Treasury in three tranches: The first tranche, $700 billion, the second tranche $900 billion, the third tranche $900 billion.

Once the request is made it would be appropriate in either or both houses for a resolution of disapproval to be taken up on an expedited procedure. If that expedited procedure in both the House and the Senate — if the resolution of disapproval achieved a majority — it would go down to him where he could either sign it or veto it. My assumption is he would veto it. And that veto would be sustained by one-third-plus-one in either of the houses.

This is about as cynical as you can get. What McConnell wants to do is force Obama and the Democrats to take multiple votes on the debt ceiling throughout 2012 (note: there’s an election in November of that year).

Kevin Drum says this is :

possibly the most juvenile, most buck passing, most transparently mendacious proposal I can recall from any party leader in recent memory. The bright idea here is to force Democrats to repeatedly vote to raise the debt ceiling during campaign season, and to repeatedly force Obama to lay out enormous budget cuts that have no purpose except to piss off interest groups. The whole thing is so patently, ridiculously political that it’s breathtaking. It ought to be named the “Gratuitous Embarrassment of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party Act of 2011.”

Does McConnell really think that he’s being clever here? That his purpose isn’t plain to everyone? The Republican Party has now passed from Alice in Wonderland to Lord of the Flies. It’s like dealing with a bunch of kids on a playground. Are McConnell and Boehner trying to prove Obama’s point that he’s the only adult at the table right now?

I don’t think they’re trying to prove that, Kevin, but to most honest observers it’s hard to draw any other conclusion.

I think it suddenly dawned on McConnell that they were about to lose the public relations battle over this issue and that prompted him to come up with this maneuver.

Neither Obama nor the Dems have responded as of this writing.