Compromise

Most liberals are fairly conservative in their thinking; but, they don’t want to agree with anything a conservative has to say for fear they will then be stigmatized. God forbid, my mother-in-law, who is more conservative than I am, admit that there might be conservatism in her thought processes. Fiscally, she is far more conservative than most Republican’s I know, but she spent 35 years as a member of the NEA and, to her, Republican is a bad word. Those nasty Republican’s, they want teachers to suffer. They want to pay teacher’s less and spend more on defense, it’s just the way they are. Obviously, I could get into the argument about why it is important to spend money on defense in order to have an economy that is stable and, thereby, money to pay the teachers, but it will never get that far. The level of polarization is beyond our ability to bridge those gaps anymore.
At least my Dad admits that he is a progressive. He comes right out with it, unapologetically, and says, I think government should take over the health care system, run the Arabs out of the country, and nuke Iran. Well, isn’t that a breath of fresh air? We’re all so busy accusing each other of our perceived faults that we can’t reach any common ground. And do we want to really? In Massachusetts last month, most Democrats said they voted for Scott Brown because they didn’t want one party in control. Democrats in Massachusetts voted for a Republican…what has the world come to? My favorite liberal friend laments that they will lose everything they’ve worked for if they lose the health care package currently before the senate due to Scott Brown’s election. But what is it the Democrats/liberals/progressives have really put in to this bill? All that work includes: an extension of HIPPA (really, at the center of it) in the form of Max Baucus’ contribution, pay-offs to the unions who don’t want their Cadillac health plans taxed, pay-offs to the service unions for the same, no public option, which most liberals will say was the point of their efforts to begin with, and some bribes to the good folks of Arkansas and Kansas that will exempt them from these efforts. Yep, that’s a lot to lose, alright. So, a crappy plan will get tabled, a real tragedy in the liberal world.
Why, however, did they not get it passed during the last several months? They had the votes, or they were supposed to have had them. We conservatives don’t have the ability to stop this, it’s all in their court, but they couldn’t get it done. My question is this: why is the first reaction of the politicians who couldn’t get this done to blame the Republicans for obstructing the bill? We didn’t have the votes, we didn’t have the ability to stop anything from passing, but the accusations started flying almost immediately. We are hip-deep in the hypocrisy of it all. But it’s not even the accusations that piss me off. It’s the elitist, we know better than you attitude of any politician who thinks that they can take my money and tell me what I need from them. It truly makes me sick. I’m so tired of the regulation, taxation, and the cradle-to-grave mentality, that I think I’ll just throw up on it all. I want to find the middle ground, I want to find a way to agree on basic principles with those who feel strongly one way or another, but it will never happen. It’s the end of communication as we know it. Debate is out the door. Conservatives are constantly being called “closed-minded,” defeatist, obstructionist, hacks and we’re tired. We’re tired of being the ones to compromise.
Yep, I know, we never compromise. Well crap on that. We spent the entire Bush administration compromising our core values, and we’re seeing the result in the tea party movement. The age of compromise is over, and if my prediction is correct and we are a “middle-right” country, as I suspect, we will no longer be interested in compromise. We’ve spent too much, done too little, and the progressives are going to have to run away again into the dark closet of history, because we, as small business people, are the only hope for the economy.
We are the only hope for the teachers, firemen, police and all the other public servants who get paid using tax dollars. It never seems to get through to the partisans: tax dollars pay teacher’s salaries and there is a limit to what people are willing to fork over as a percentage of their take-home pay. A very small percentage of the total taxable population in this country are truly rich; so, the liberals can blame them for everything from getting big bonuses (which they spend, generally, in our economy) to just being rich, but when it comes down to brass tacks, the numbers don’t lie. The rich will take all their money and go elsewhere or decide that it’s just not worth it if you take more than 50% of their money! Since that leaves us with the middle class (us poor saps who earn under $100k a year) to pay for all the services, the tax rates will skyrocket. Where do you think this is all going? To hell, that’s where. And we’re sick of it, we’re sick of it to the point of no longer wanting to find common ground. So, although this was supposed to be about finding common ground, I guess I’m no longer interested.