Are the GOP's problems Obama's fault?

Jonathan Chait:

It’s certainly true that Republicans are undergoing some internal strife right now over the tax issue. Daniel Henninger, also on the Journal editorial page, mourns that the president is “dismantle[ing] their party by letting its most basic conservative principles disappear.” But how this is Obama’s fault, I can’t quite figure out. It was Republicans who elevated the unpopular cause of low income tax rates for the rich to a sacred principle, built an entire party theology around punishing even the slightest dissent from that principle, and then enacted the sacred agenda through a rickety budget mechanism that caused it all to expire after a decade. That was a bad idea. Since Republicans are at least considering how to rebuild their party at the moment, my advice would be to do something else next time.