Compromise

    
     Compromise is not a policy.  It's what you do if you must do it in order to get something you need or want very much.  You would rather get the whole loaf and you may hold out for it.  If you stand firm there may be no deal.  That happens.  But you don't say, before there are any negotiations underway or before anyone has said anything, "I'm here to compromise".
      Conservatives are accused of  taking a "hard line" on the deficit, taxes and other matters.  But how else can you take a position about anything if not at least in the beginning taking what the liberals and their media friends call a "hard line"?  Do you say "I'll pay you $10,000 for that painting but I don't really mean it and I'm willing to compromise"?  That's not compromise.  That is setting a floor on what you will be willing to pay.  In effect you are saying that you will pay at least $10,000 and you may go up from there.  Another way of looking at it is to say that you have made the prospective seller's first offer for him and you have thereby started  negotiations by negotiating with yourself.  The Tea Party people were elected to Congress in November of 2011 on their promise to the voters to reduce spending and the deficit if at all possible.  They believe that it cannot happen if the debt ceiling is continually raised.  So they promised the voters that they would take a position on those matters and in so doing they were doing what the voters wanted .  That's democracy.  The left, as expected, charged them with being unreasonable and, also as expected, the "moderates" in the GOP were ready to agree with the left as  they almost always are.  But what were conservatives supposed to do?  Should they  have said "we won't agree to raise the debt ceiling --- but we might"?  That is almost like saying nothing at all.  If you offer to buy someone's painting for $10,000 there is nothing to prevent him from making a counter-offer.  You may accept it, or you may not accept it.  Nothing prevents a prospective buyer from taking his own position and seeing where he can get with it.
     Frequently negotiations take an if-then form.  For example, the Democrats might say "if you will agree to raise the debt ceiling we will do such-and-such".  If that is to have any reasonable meaning the such-and-such part has to be specific and firm.  What the Democrats do in reality, to the applause of their media and moderate friends, is to say "if you will agree to  raise  the debt ceiling by X amount we will agree to talk about such-and-such.  No sale, or it should be no sale.