It's been fun watching Republicans talk about compromise as if it were a synonym for capitulation. Here's what happened with Health Care: Democrats had a 60 seat (if not vote) majority, but they still tried to put everything they could in the bill that Republicans would want and take out everything that Republicans would find even remotely offensive. After all this, the Republicans still claim that Democrats refuse to cooperate.
We could talk about how they get away with this sort of rhetoric, but that's a blog for a different day. What I want to talk about now is what compromise really means. Compromise is about two people making concessions to achieve a middle ground. Let's put it in simple terms that anyone can understand: let's say you have a group of people and they want to order a pizza. There are ten of you. 4 want supreme pizza, 3 want pepperoni, and 3 want veggie. What the Democrats did was forgo supreme pizza completely even though the majority wanted it. The democrats decided to order pizzas for everyone that was half pepperoni half veggie. The Republicans refuse to eat the pizza because they only want pepperoni, and now believe we should start ordering from scratch. That's not compromise, that's ... well being a child. Only children refuse to eat with others because they don't get what they want, and when you give in to them, still cry about the unfairness of it all.
When I see Eric Cantor or John Boehner talking about "starting with a clean sheet", i think of a child whining about having to share with others, and sad because they don't get to dictate how the game is played anymore. The sad part is that we as Democrats let them get away with this. I don't have children, but for those of you who do, how long would you allow your kids to get away with this sort of behavior? How long are we going to let Republicans get away with it?
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