Republicans pulled their Plan B tax bill from the House floor late Thursday, announcing that they lacked the votes to pass it and won't return to Washington until after Christmas. The White House may chortle that the GOP is in disarray, and it is, but this failure to govern also owes much to President Obama's failure to negotiate with any degree of seriousness. If Washington now goes off the tax cliff, Mr. Obama may not enjoy the plunge as much as some of his partisans believe.

Speaker John Boehner defaulted to Plan B as a...