Brilliant post, brilliant re-orientation of the debate. This line: “The ‘middle’ is more about the commitment to collaboration – not about where we start,” should be in Bartlett’s. I don’t think anyone has said it better or more succinctly. Thank you.

I feel that a lot of people identify as centrists because they lean one way on one issue and another way on another issue, but the degree to which they lean may still be pretty strong. It averages out to a centrist position and it’s not partisan, but it can still be resistant to compromise in a lot of cases.

Funny, that’s the way I view this blog. There aren’t too many mushy middle types here, they’re all pretty much (can’t tell for Joe) solidly on one side of the aisle or the other. And I don’t see too many of them willing to cede any ground on their pet issues in order to compromise.

oh, and I hadn’t yet seen your post as I was typing out ‘devils in the details’… what’s that about great minds?

First, for all the people who don’t have what you’d call moderate views on a given topic (and there are more of them than of you), compromising means having to abandon the pursuit of their genuinely held views on that issue. Is it any surprise they don’t compromise? If someone really truly feels that abortion is evil or that it should be available wherever and whenever someone wants, or vice-versa, that it is evil and should never be allowed, good for them that they stick to their guns. If a wife was opposed to her husband beating her, would you expect her to compromise by agreeing to let her husband beat her, so long as he agreed to not do it as often? Or should she stick to her guns and do everything she could to keep him from beating her at all?

Second, the biggest disputes involve issues on which one side can be viewed as being in control, with the other side trying to take away from the first group. Abortion-rights and gun-rights folks are both trying to protect what they have from those trying to take it away. Compromise ‘might’ be possible if, in return for giving up some of what they have, those who had control received a promise from the other side that they wouldn’t keep trying to nick away. As an example, perhaps the gun rights side might agree to nationwide registration if the anti-gun groups swore to not then try to restrict gun ownership, or perhaps the abortion rights side would agree to parental notification if the anti-abortion side would stop trying to put further restrictions in place. But with there being absolutely no possibility that any such group would agree to call off the hunt, the group with power justifiably sees absolutely no benefit in giving away even a little bit of the control of an issue that they have… and thus, no compromise.

Third, reaching compromise means finding common ground on which a majority can agree… and I don’t think that position really exists. The devil is in the details and while you’re willing to give up X in order to get Y, somebody else would rather give up S to get Y… and it turns out that you’re very much opposed to giving up S. Compromise sounds good in principle but the reality is that you really can’t split the baby in such a way that satisfies 51% of the people.

Take abortion, for example. Paul says:

We prefer that woman have a right to choose but that we do what we can to reduce the number of abortions and facilitate adoption.

OK, sounds good, but what do we mean by “do what we can to reduce the number of abortions”? Does that strictly refer to promoting education and availability of birth control (and does abstinence education for kids play any role there?), or are we also talking about restricting certain forms of abortion? How about more vigorous informed consent so that women seeking abortions are advised to think through what they are doing first? Would those who want to “do what we can to reduce abortions” feel that was too much of an infringement on the “right to choose”?

These are difficult questions, and the devil’s in the details.

“The ‘middle’ is more about the commitment to collaboration – not about where we start.”