Pence: GOP Must Not Compromise With Obama

Sounds like a man who's running for President. (Or, for Palin fans, sounds like a man who's running for Vice President, or Secretary of Commerce.)

It also sounds like the right policy.

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana, in a clear jab at a Wall Street Journal story that indicated the GOP would look to avoid gridlock, plans to say that “there can be no compromise that allows more borrowing, more spending, more deficits and more debt.”

“Now, the last few days there has been some talk about how Republicans could avoid the ‘mistakes’ of 1995 by seeking compromise with this administration,” according to an excerpt reported by the conservative blog Redstate. “The last Republican Congress didn’t suffer from too little compromise, it suffered from too much. Republicans lost their majority because of too much compromise on spending and deficits and debt.”

In 2009, Obama refused to work with Republicans, refused to compromise. He thought that this was a good strategy, that it would allow him to pursue his own half-baked ideas without adulteration by moderation and wisdom.

It was actually a spectacularly bad idea. Not only did his bad ideas go through Congress with no amelioration by wiser minds, but he owned the stimulus and bailouts, all to himself. By refusing to compromise one whit, he also set himself up to take all the credit when his plans succeeded wildly... but that didn't happen, of course. Instead, he took all the blame when his plans failed catastrophically. He cannot point to any Republicans (except maybe poor bewildered Cao down in Cold Cash Jefferson's old district) who signed on to his disasters.

In the next Congress, Obama will have a new mission: Get Republicans to compromise with him, not for any policy reason, but for a purely political one: He desperately needs Republicans to sign on to his train wreck in progress so that he and the Democrats are not the only one responsible.

That must be resisted at all costs. It's not just bad policy, it's horrendous politics. Obama is a failure -- why would anyone seek to twine his fate with a crashing star?

Obama can either boldly move to the right and accept the New Mandate or he can continue owning this, until we evict his lazy incompetent ass in January 2013.

posted by Ace at 10:13 PM

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