Compromise

Et tu, der Speigel?

How many times do we have to say it?  America is not a Democracy.  It is a Republic.  It is a Democratic Republic, but that means that it uses Democracy as a tool, not an end, and the Democracy must operate within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic.

Now, I know you journalists went into journalism to avoid math.  I went to a college with one of the most prominent journalism schools in the country, and that is one of the most common reasons given by journalism students.  The other, of course, according to these bastions of impartiality, is to "make a difference". I knew a lot of "J" majors.

This is why "Change" worked so well on them

But let's do a little math lesson, shall we.   Let's suppose you are spending $n.   Suppose one party wants to spend $(n+m), and the other says, no, we are spending enough.

Straight compromise gets you

                      $(n+m)
                     ---------  >  $n   (if m is positive, this term will always evaluate to more.)
                           2
Thus "compromise" always means spending more.  In other words, the party that wants more spending always gets more spending.  And then you have Obama, over the budget issue -- asking:

a visibly annoyed Obama asked reporters: "Can they say yes to anything?" 

What do you call it when a Republican controlled house passes two (or is it three now?) separate bills which go to a Democratically controlled senate which then refuses to vote on any of them?

If party A wants more spending and proposes a giant increase in m, perhaps much larger than what they're really hoping for, and party B says, "we're spending too much as it is due to all these incremental $(n+m)/2 increases  --  party A still gets what it wants, and party B gets called "the party of no".  Annihilating Democracy!!!!

Now suppose that America's debt is 6.6 times its annual "salary" and climbing -- we're spending 167% of our income, and party A wants to make it 175%, while party B says not only "no", but "Hell No!"

Who is being unreasonable here?

If party A gets what it wants, even some of it, the country is in a worse position financially, and it's already very, very bad.  If party B gets what it wants, the country isn't in a much better position, but it has taken an important step in that direction, which might just buy a little goodwill from our creditors.

Who is being unreasonable here?

The Tea Party merely wants the Federal Government to take the debt and spending issue seriously.  The debt limit is not the problem, but the "need" to raise it is a symptom of the problem.

But we get oversimplified pablum like:

With its stubbornness, the Tea Party is betraying its own idols. They like to quote Ronald Reagan, famous for saying that "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." But even he didn't shy away from governing. He raised taxes 11 times and upped the debt ceiling 18 times.

(Hmmm... "Governing" = "Raising Taxes" and "Upping the Debt Ceiling" ... revealing).

I would argue that 1) The situation in the 1980's was clearly much different from today's 2) just because we agree with a man's philosophy and general governing practices doesn't mean we'd agree with everything he might do, and 3) I don't believe for a minute that Reagan would be for what the Dems are doing today, and if he had forseen the "Charge It!" binge the Federal Government would go on, he would have fought harder against it.

I mean, LOOK at the chart.  Back in the Reagan days, we were talking about 1.5 to 2.3 trillion.  We're talking an order of magnitude above that, and our GDP has NOT kept pace with the spending (hence the debt).

When the Left saw the same thing on Al Gore's (fake!) "hockey stick" graph, we were to be alarmed.  This graph is real numbers, not statistically manufactured and manipulated.

If the country is headed for a cliff, and each compromise gets you closer to the cliff, not compromising becomes more and more urgent with each compromise.  The cliff's about here.  Somebody needs to dig their heels in.

Good governance means not driving the country into the ground with extra-constitutional spending and outrageous debt.