California Choppers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker John Boehner, hoping to spare fellow Republicans a second embarrassing defeat over payroll tax cuts, is prepared to navigate around rebellious Tea Party-aligned lawmakers to get a deal, according to congressional aides.

Republicans in the House of Representatives got a public drubbing from critics within and outside the party in December for initially refusing to approve a Senate plan to extend the tax break for 160 million Americans through February.

The party of lower taxes was left on the defensive, countering a barrage of criticism that its unwillingness to compromise threatened an effective tax hike on workers, potentially damaging the fragile economic recovery.

Now, with Democratic and Republican negotiators preparing for a new round of talks in the coming days to extend the payroll tax cut for the rest of the year, Republican leaders are anxious to move quickly to get a deal, aides said.

Party leaders fear another battle could distract from the more important task at hand - ousting President Barack Obama from the White House and winning majority control of the Senate in the November elections. They also want to neutralize an issue that Democrats already are using to their advantage in the presidential and congressional campaigns.

"I think Boehner will seek a more accommodating approach to get a good percentage of Democrats to vote for it - even if it costs him a lot of House Republican freshmen," one House Republican leadership aide told Reuters.

"His instincts will be not to be so reliant on House Republican freshmen," the aide added, referring to the 85 first-term congressmen.

The freshmen, many of whom are aligned with the populist budget-slashing Tea Party movement, helped the Republican Party win control of the House in 2010 and have since proven stubbornly uncompromising in the debate over taxes and spending.

Congress has until February 29 to agree on extending the tax cut, which would give...