Compromise is a dirty word — if you’re losing

It’s not surprising that the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee thinks the way to end gridlock in Washington is to elect more Democrats. Surely, Republicans think winning back the Senate and the White House is the key to progress.

But Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said this weekend that Republican fealty to the Tea Party is the root cause of partisan standoffs.

“The Republicans, because they have fully embraced the extremists in the Tea Party, they think that compromise is a dirty word, coming together and working together is the wrong thing to do,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I’ve just never seen a group of individuals so insistent on things being their way and saying no. They’ve twice brought us to the brink of shutting the government down. Their approach to governing is really shockingly out of touch with the needs of Americans.”

Then again, it all depends on your perspective. It’s not hard to envision Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, saying the same thing. Just replace “Tea Party” with “Big Labor” or “Occupy Wall Street.”

Besides, if you’re losing, compromise is a dirty word, isn’t it?

Democrats in Congress — led by our own Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — want to extend a payroll tax cut into 2012 and pay for it, in part, with an income tax surcharge on people earning more than $1 million per year. Democrats lowered their tax surcharge rate from 3.25 to 1.9 percent after Republicans objected.

Compromise, right? Not if you’re a Republican who believes that any tax hike (regardless of whether a person can afford it) is bad economic policy. Then it’s not so much a compromise as it is losing by a smaller amount.

And from that perspective, it’s easy to understand why Republicans say no so often to Democrats. Republicans say intervention in the economy is almost always bad and leads to negative consequences. (Before you rush to the keyboard to point out that a Republican president proposed and passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, let me say that there are plenty of conservatives who opposed it.)

What this means, then, is that our politics are destined not to be those of compromise for the common good, but rather a zero-sum game in which the proponents of government must necessarily play to defeat those who’d rather see government destroyed, or at least severely truncated.

Which brings us back to Wasserman Schultz.

“We’ve got a long way to go, but things are beginning to turn around,” she said. “Contrast that with the Republicans who haven’t offered a single bill or idea on how to create jobs in 11, almost 12 months of being in charge in the House of Representatives. They’ve focused on a really right-wing social agenda, they’ve pandered to the extremists in the Tea Party. (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell made it very clear at the beginning of this Congress he cares about one thing, one priority: defeating Barack Obama. That’s his No. 1 priority.”

And, “They (Republicans) don’t want President Obama to be successful at all, because if he is, they know it’s less likely that they’ll be successful in the election.”

Should Obama be defeated, expect Republicans to complain that Democrats are constantly refusing to compromise. And expect Democrats to reply that a compromise that radically remakes Medicare or turns Social Security into a system of private accounts is not compromise, but surrender.

It’s not surprising to hear both Republicans and Democrats talk about how things would be so much better, if only our opponents would just agree with us more.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@ reviewjournal.com.