NOW it's time for no compromise

Politico:

There’s a new gang of senators who ran their campaigns as unabashed progressives and won.... Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ... [and] Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) join newly reelected Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island to strengthen a once-dwindling group of die-hard liberals....

[T]he question in a divided Senate is whether the new liberals will be hard-liners who refuse to compromise with the tea party types on the other side of the aisle or negotiators, like Kennedy, who made deals with Republicans.

I was, until recently, of the negotiating Kennedy camp, which of course rendered me persona non grata in the progressive blogosphere. This suited me just fine, especially when I discovered, during the "public option" debacle, that many if not most online progressives were as impervious to reason as their right-wing counterparts. I remain ostracized, which makes me even happier, in that it confirms my earlier diagnosis of rampaging authoritarian personality--on both sides.

I no longer subscribe, however, to negotiation--not with this current bunch of anarchic, nihilistic and, in my opinion, downright unAmerican tea partiers. They are a blight, a plague, a wasteland unto themselves. Merely defeating them is insufficient. As the pestilential pathogens they are, they must be isolated and then neutralized and finally swept from all legislative landscapes of human decency. 

I've never been an extremist--I am, after all, a democratic socialist who contentedly navigates a mostly centrist country--but in this instance I find that playing the absolutist is an inescapable prerequisite to progress. Tea party fanaticism must be reduced and returned to its underground Bircher status--and that means no compromise with it, none at all.

Comments

[Adam Simms]

"A plague," "pestilential pathogens." Sorry -- that kind of language is redolent of Nazi vocabulary regarding Jews. I prefer Mencken's approach: keep jeering at them, make them a laughingstock that no reasonable, sane person who wants the respect of his/her peers will support or quote. True, Mencken was good at invective; but he was best at jeering.

[japa21]

I tend to have followed your pattern. I was for engotiating at first for a couple reasons. The first was that it was appropriate to do, that is how government, in general, works.
Then I was supportive of Obama's negotiating stance because it made the Republicans show their true colors.
Now, I am totally in favor of drawing lines in the sand. Change the filibuster so the Senate can actually pass some reasonable legislation and force the Republican House to respond to it.
The public already believes that if we go over the hypothetical cliff, it will be the Republicans fault.
Of course, that comes from a poll, so the Republicans won't believe it.
And just in case anybody forgets, Pbama is very good at sarcasm, something the GOP may have forgotten, to their future peril.

[AnneJ]

Well it will certainly be interesting to see how that all plays out. Now how do you feel about them negotiating with more conservative or "blue dog" democrats? The republicans already think they have a mandate in the house because they still hold the majority there, but a 50.6 to 47.8 popular vote and 332 to 206 electoral college majority does not a mandate make for Obama according to whatever passes for their logic. I can understand Obama's needing to negotiate with hardline republicans when he had a reelection to worry about, but now he's got nothing to lose and let's hope that soon enough the republicans will learn who really won this election. It's going to be a fun four years!

[W Caulfield]

Telling the truth in public is now "redolent of Nazi vocabulary." So be it, only...be careful about what stage of the game you play the Nazi card. You may not have it in your deck later when you really need it.

[Peter G]

I have to disagree with you both philosophically and factually. Factually there will be and can be no compromise with the tea party senators. That does not mean that there cannot be compromise with other Republican senators. In fact, that is essential to drive the wedge that will force the Republican party into civil war.