As tough and unyielding as Americans tend to portray themselves to be, the real genius of the American character, especially in politics, is the ability to compromise. I'm hardly the first commentator to make this observation but it's useful to remind ourselves of this fact. Very, very rarely does anyone side demand and get everything they wanted on any one issue or other and in no small part because our system was designed that way. Democracy American-style is cumbersome, slow, purposely inefficient, a system in which cooperation, partnerships and negotiation are emphasized over brute power, a system designed to ensure that the views of as many people as possible are respected before decisions are made. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the competing plans of Virginia and New Jersey to determine Congressional representation were resolved by the Great Compromise, wherein the House of Representatives would be based on a state's population while in the Senate, each state would be represented equally, and the support of Southern states for the new Constitution was obtained by compromising on slavery. True, compromising on slavery merely postponed the violent resolution of that issue but not compromising would have meant the failure of the Convention and likely the dissolution of the Union itself, so the compromise was made, the Constitution was adopted, the new country was provided a unique and amazing form of government and hope for an ultimate and peaceful resolution was placed in the hands of future generations.Thirty-three years later, Henry Clay of Kentucky led the Compromise of 1820 in which most of the territory gained from France by the Louisiana Purchase was designated as free with the exception of Missouri, which was designated a slave state. The free Northern states didn't want to allow the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi River but the slave-holding Southern states were threatening to secede from the Union if it were not, and rather than let the Union dissolve, those Congressmen and Senators from the North took what they could get - a mostly free land in the West and accepted something they didn't like - a toehold for slavery beyond the Mississippi. This legislation helped hold the Union together for another thirty years until Mr. Clay's services were once again called upon, this time to broker the Compromise of 1850. Disposition of the land gained from Mexico during our war with that country was the bone of contention in this case, again because the Southern states wanted to expand slavery into the western territories and the Northern states wanted to stop it, and again, the Southern states threatened to secede from the Union if their demands were not respected. Unfortunately, the compromise that Mr. Clay negotiated was a bad one, as the responsibility for deciding the status of new territories was passed from Congress to the territories themselves in a policy called "popular sovereignty," which encouraged slaveholding Southerners to move west and vote for slavery and which also led to violence between the factions. The Compromise of 1850 also included provisions strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act which required all citizens regardless of their political views to actively assist the authorities in capturing runaway slaves, a move that was immensely popular in the South and immensely unpopular in the North, but nonetheless, it bought the Union ten more years before the storm actually broke. When that storm broke, President Abraham Lincoln decided to allow free blacks to serve in the Union Army with the proviso that their officers should be white, which, although resented by the black regiments themselves, put 150,000 additional soldiers into the fight,undoubtedly shortening the war. Lincoln's ability to see the end result - the end of the war - allowed him to accept the criticism and resistance sparked by his decision and ultimately saved lives.
During the Cold War, President Nixon initiated the policy of detente with the Soviet Union which recognized the Soviets as a global superpower but which also reduced the tensions inherent in the previous policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Nixon realized that if nothing changed, the Americans and the Soviets would eventually destroy each other and much of the rest of the world. Detente would come at a price - the Soviets would amass a huge nuclear arsenal, would dominate Eastern Europe, would establish Communist beachheads in Africa and Latin America and invade Afghanistan - but would reduce the immediate threat of a cataclysmic nuclear war. People may differ on the wisdom of Nixon's policy but if the goal was to prevent war, then the compromise succeeded. Within the current administration, Priest-King compromised in December 2010 by extending the Bush tax cuts and to revise estate taxes in order to prevent a shutdown of the Federal government. It was no coincidence that this compromise followed the "shellacking" delivered by the Republicans in the midterm elections that year but it nonetheless demonstrated that Priest-King himself is willing to compromise when it is in his interest to do so, so for him to flatly refuse to negotiate with the Republicans in our current crisis is a patently ludicrous position to take. To insist that the Republicans simply surrender their principles, their constituents and their interests flies in the face of 237 years of American history as well as political reality: The House Republicans cannot govern without Priest-King and Priest-King cannot govern without the House Republicans. Both sides need each other and cannot execute their duties without each other. Compromise should not be a dirty word.
But how did we get here? Why did the Federal government shut down for sixteen days? What was so important that 313 million people lived without a government for a fortnight plus two? One word: Obamacare. Conservative Republicans took a stand against Obamacare because it is a disaster and because their constituents demanded its defunding. Despite the criticism from the leftist Democrats and RINO Republicans, the conservatives insisted that fighting Obamacare and the associated colossal level of spending was worth a government shutdown. The initial evidence proves their claim:
• Creating the HealthCare.gov website and associated health care exchanges was supposed to cost $93 million. We now know that it actually cost $634 million, nearly seven times as much.
• Despite the massive resources lavished to create it, the HealthCare.gov website is dysfunctional. Users are required to create an account, divulging their personal information, before they are allowed to browse the available health care plans. The website also obscures the actual cost of the health care plans until the user has created an account, meaning the user is committed before they know how much they will have to pay. The website also frequently crashes.
• Premiums under Obamacare are 6-8 times what people previously paid for their health insurance, and deductibles for family coverage are as high as $10,000 per year. Consumers are liable to have their tax refunds seized to pay the premiums, their cars, their 401k retirement funds, even their homes.
• The Priest-King administration refuses to disclose how many people have actually purchased health insurance through Obamacare but the UK Daily Mail newspaper reports that only 51,000 people nationwide have signed up. If Obamacare was intended to cover 30 million uninsured Americans, this represents a colossal failure for the program, on top of the 2000± businesses and unions that have been exempted for a year.
So stopping Obamacare and stratospheric Federal spending was worth a bloody fight, even if we didn't win. For me, I would rather go down swinging than lamely accept the status quo. (Are you listening, Senator Corker? Are you listening, Congressman Peter King?) This law will ruin America and it is the obligation of our elected officials to stop it, slow it down or at least kick it in the knees. The fact that Priest-King and his cronies in the Senate defended it so desperately is an indication of how shaky they think it is. For example, the offer that the House Republicans made - a delay of the individual mandate for one year - was perfectly reasonable given that Priest-King had already unilaterally delayed the business mandate for the same period, but was absolutely unacceptable to the Emperor of the Americas. Why would he refuse to consider something so modest? Because such a compromise, though reasonable, would kill the plan. Obamacare hinges on tens of millions of healthy young Americans paying painfully high premiums in order to defray the health costs of an aging population (and 21 million illegals). Even a short delay would drain Obamacare of the billions of dollars it needs and would expire coincident with the midterm Congressional elections, magnifying the political danger the Democrats would face, so Priest-King refused, and refused, and refused again.
So if he defended Obamacare so ferociously, why couldn't Priest-King relent on government spending or the debt ceiling or entitlement reform? Why did he instruct Harry Reid to refuse to consider any of the eleven bills that the House passed that would have funded the government by parts, which is perfectly within its authority to do? To insist that Republicans give him everything he wants before he deigned to negotiate with them only enfuriated the opposition, stiffening their resolve to fight him, so why take such an intractable position when we were only 24 hours from the first default in our history? It is part of Priest-King's character to demand absolute obedience to his will and it was that part of George Ill's character that led the American colonists to rebel. His election and reelection confirmed in his mind that he has a mandate from the people to transform the United States from its corrupt and unjust founding to a true socialist model, that his word is holy writ, beyond question and to be obeyed. Skepticism and -God forbid it - open resistance to his leadership are treachery, even treasonous, and deserve to be crushed, and he discards evidence that his signature legislative achievement is failing just as his critics predicted. Preventing a default of the Federal government is not his primary objective so he will defend Obamacare to the last, watch the country he has twice sworn to defend slide into financial abyss, damn the Republicans to hell and then go play golf. To those Leftist Democrats and moderate Republicans who urged caution, who attacked Ted Cruz and Mike Lee as too extreme, who would rather go along to get along, who would rather quit than try, who oppose Big Government but just not today, I would ask two questions:
1. When ordinary Americans have their wages garnished to pay an $18,000 health insurance premium they cannot afford and they are driven to food stamps to feed their families,because you thought fighting like hell to prevent their ruin wasn't worth it, how exactly will you answer them?
2. Exactly where are your balls?
