When Compromise Becomes A Virtue

Isn't it funny that when Democrats can't get what they want by ramming bills through Congress with majorities in both houses, they suddenly discover compromise?

Remember how, in early 2010, after Scott Brown of Massachusetts became the 41st Republican Senator in a special election, the Democrats, far from working to compromise on ObamaCare, contorted the process of passing the bill in order to avoid any compromise with Republicans, instead, ramming the bill through as a spending bill, rather than a policy-focused health care bill?

Now, during the current debt limit increase process, because Harry Reid and Wonderboy can't get what they want, they brand the newly-elected Republican Representatives and Senators who bring with them a new voter preference for fiscal rectitude and lower spending as terrorists, while they now preach compromise.

They trot out that old Washington refrain,

'The voters want us to work together to get something done. They don't understand all this partisan extremism and bickering.'

Actually, they do. And we know for a fact that voters in at least 87 House districts, the ones which elected freshmen GOP members, and a handful of states which elected Senators like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and other Tea Party-inclined GOP freshmen Senators, don't care about bi-partisanship which allows the free-spending liberal Democrats to continue their usual Washington ways.

What I believe we are seeing is not a new emphasis on bi-partisanship, but a fleeting moment of collaboration to do the minimum necessary to operate the federal government, until the 2012 elections sweep Democrats from their control of the Senate and, probably, the Oval Office.

Then compromise won't be required anymore- again. Only then, the GOP will be able to cut spending, borrowing, entitlements, and enact meaningful tax reform with fewer preference items and lower rates.

All without compromise.

That's when you won't hear the word compromise from House and Senate minority leaders anymore.

But I agree with Charles Krauthammer, who contended recently on Fox News that Americans need a serious, knock-down, drag-out debate about the nation's direction at least once every generation.

That's what is occurring now. The recent debt limit debates and so-called (faux) crisis is merely the opening shot in that battle.

If you can objectively observe the trends of the past four years, it's pretty clear that the election of an inexperienced, spendthrift Senator from Illinois to the presidency, along with majorities in both houses of Congress, was the breaking point.

Now momentum has moved back the other way.

As I write this at 4PM on Monday afternoon, Boehner and his leadership team has just finished their press conference. They didn't get all they wanted. The debt limit bill isn't a conservative's dream. But it at least has, as Paul Ryan asserted, changed the direction in spending at the federal level for the first time in decades.

The real heavy lifting will occur after 2012. Until then, it'll be a holding action as the GOP prevents wild spending in reaction to recent weak economic data. But the stage appears to be set now for a longer term move toward conservative values on federal spending, debt and taxes.