Republicans Don’t Know the Meaning of the Word “Compromise” and Don’t Care

That's What the Survey Says

People running for political office spout what they believe to be the winning campaign positions, whether they believe them or not.  Once in office the realities of governing control.  So Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on balancing the budget, but had to give way to massive increases in spending to relieve the Depression.

John Kennedy campaigned on a “missile gap” with the Soviets, but once in office found such a gap did not exist.  Ronald Reagan was another balanced budgeter, but created deficits that were a record for their time.  George W. Bush, the Compassionate Conservative won office and was neither compassionate nor conservative.

Barack Obama saw his primary governing philosophy as one that would “fix Washington”, and Democrats and Republicans would sit down and work out their differences and implement policies on a bi-partisan basis.  Mr. Obama tried to do this, continually revising and re-designing health care reform and his stimulus package to try to please Republicans, and he never could.  The result was a colossal, complex, reform package that will be repealed Day 1 that Republicans have to power to do so and a stimulus package that was poorly targeted and insufficient.

The lesson that Mr. Obama should have learned from this was that in order to implement his goal of fixing Washington, he had to have the Republicans buy into that goal.  He has never learned this lesson, not even after having to go back on his promise not to extend the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy, not even after conceding to Republicans on 2011 spending and not even after completely abandoning his position on revenue increases to get a deficit reduction/debt ceiling package approved.

The Dismal Political Economist is concerend that Mr. Obama will never learn, and that the rest of his presidency, which may not be all that long, will be continual concessions to Republicans with no concessions on their part at all.  The explanation is given in this chart here.

Republicans by 70% to 30% want principle over compromise no matter what, the exact opposite of Democrats.  This does not mean that Republicans cannot be forced into compromise, it just means to do so one must first stand rigid for some principle itself, and let the consequences happen.  Sadly it looks like Mr. Obama will not see this chart, and  will not learn.