Or less. True compromise — meaningful compromise — only happens when each side’s starting point is a whole loaf. If your starting position is half a loaf, you will end up with even less — and that’s not compromise. It’s agreeing to surrender before you even begin.
Apparently, Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus is starting to realizing that — too late, unfortunately:
He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.
Exactly. And that’s why “compromise” is now defined as not having a public health plan at all:
On MSNBC this morning, Norah O’Donnell asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, “what needs to be in” a health care reform bill “for it to be bipartisan.” After saying it needs to be paid for, Grassley declared, “We need to make sure that there’s no public option.” When O’Donnell double-checked that Grassley was saying that a public option was a dealbreaker for Republicans, he replied, “Absolutely.”
That is why the accusation made by some conservatives that liberals who support a public health care option are “purists” who “refuse to compromise” is such an outrageous distortion of the truth. By leaving single-payer out of the discussion entirely (in Congress, not among Americans in general), Republicans can now declare the public health care option idea to be the “purist” or “extreme” position, when it’s actually already the compromised position. And it’s very much downhill from there.
And yes, that makes me very, very angry.
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