There is nothing moderates, and even voters, want more than for Washington’s feuding parties to disarm and compromise on the big battles over Social Security, Medicare, taxes and the deficit. “Compromise is the substitute for violence,” warned former Rep. Jim Slattery, D-Kansas.
But Fred Thompson, actor, former Tennessee Republican senator and 2008 GOP presidential candidate, has another take: Blame compromise for the ills of Washington, especially the oppressive deficit.
At a symposium sponsored by the National Archives and U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, he said that that the fiscal disaster “has been in large part the result of compromise. Let’s spend a trillion, no let’s spend $900 billion, let’s meet in the middle. It begs the question, compromise, what does it lead to?”
To those begging for political compromise, he said, “isn’t that kind of what we’ve been doing?”
What’s more, he suggested that politicians, presumably including the president, have been pitting people and classes against each other for political gain so much that now each side hates the other and won’t sit in a room together to hash out deals.
