Sunday, November 4, 2012

The Ultimate Republican Principle

It's not smaller government, free markets, personal responsibility or even conservatism in general.

It's blackmail

Paul Krugman demonstrates it with words; Lindsey Graham, by encouraging deeds.

And the worst part of all of this is that some newspapers, who should know better for a number of reasons, apparently think that this is such a great idea that it should be rewarded with Mitt Romney's election.

Except that, as William Saletan goes on to say, this reasoning defies a principle that is supposed to be part of the GOP bedrock:  that compromise is only valid and valuable as an outcome of confrontation.

Which begs the question:  what confrontations would exist between the House hardliners and Mitt Flip-Flop?  There would be none, of course, only an ever-increasing drift to the right in a country that is showing increasing signs of drifting to the left.

Hopefully, the outcome in 2014 would be the election of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.  Then you might have real confrontation, as well as real compromise.  Assuming, of course, that Mitt is still willing to flip-flop for the remaining two years of his Presidency.


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