OK, I finally agree — it’s time to compromise

Olympia Snowe, who could be considered a Republican only in New England, recently announced she wouldn't run for re-election to her seat in the U.S. Senate this year, cutting short an abbreviated 39-year career in politics. Because she has spent 34 of those years as a member of Congress, she hasn't had to live under many of the laws she's helped enact since the middle of the Carter administration.

Why is Sen. Snowe, 65, pulling on her mukluks and hiking home to Maine? She complains there's too much hidebound ideology in Washington now, that members are not as willing as they once were to reach across the aisle, and that voters are frustrated that their representatives are less willing to "compromise in order to get things done."

Why, the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV last month staged a seminar on the Strip, at which it posed to a panel -- including columnist Kathleen Parker, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Fox News' Juan Williams -- the question: Is moderation possible in American politics?

"The implied consensus would seem to be: Probably not," responded Ms. Parker in a follow-up column. "Or at least not without massive reforms and/or a renaissance of civic duty. The hyper-partisanship we at least say we love to hate isn't likely to recede, given the rewards."

The problem with all this talk about holding hands across the aisle, about the need to compromise because voters just want Congress to get things done, of course, is where the compromising is taking place.

The forces who promote a totalitarian collectivist state, no matter whether you choose to call them socialists or fascists or the reptilian conspiracy to enslave us all to Monsanto and Goldman-Sachs, are on our 5-yard line, about to clinch the game with a final score, and we're debating whether to let them spot the ball on the 2, or whether to risk being called "mean-spirited" if we point out that the 4-yard line looks more reasonable.

At this point, if the goal of compromise is to enable Congress to "get things done," how would that help me?

Congress has been "getting things done" for 225 years. Except for getting rid of chattel slavery and a few other measures that actually enhanced the liberties of individual men and women, I wish they'd stopped "getting things done" just before they stole the land of the civilized tribes and sent the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears.

The big problem is that the only excuse we have today for a loyal opposition is the pathetically compromised, unprincipled modern Republican Party. Democrats announce they want to grow the size of the federal government, its dystopian regulatory intrusiveness into our lives (see "Quail Hollow Farm,") its appetite and tax bite, by some 9 percent per annum.

"Wayyy too much!" cries the GOP -- including their new green-eyeshade hero of the hour, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. "Surely 4.5 percent growth should be enough!"

In the end, they compromise. So each year (until the last three or four, when its rate of growth came to resemble that of the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors"), the federal government has grown "only" about 5 to 7 percent larger, more greedy, more avaricious, more tyrannical.

What a great compromise! Why, at that rate, the federal government will consume every remaining scrap of our wealth and our liberty by, let's see, 5 to 7 percent compounded ...

It's time to stop playing defense in the other guy's red zone. Here's what I expect to hear from anyone who wants my vote for a seat in Congress:

"My goal for my first year in Washington is to see half of the federal code repealed, and the size of the federal budget and payroll reduced by 50 percent, including the complete elimination of such unconstitutional agencies as Environmental Protection, Agriculture, Energy, Education, the firearms division of the BATFE and the Federal Reserve, with the eventual goal over five to six years of paring the government down to about the footprint it filled in 1836, corrected for population.

"But you know what? I'm a reasonable gal. I want an open dialogue. I'm willing to compromise. So if any Democrat or big-government Demopublican wants to offer me something that in some other way will enhance my constituents' liberty, their freedom from government interference in their lives, in exchange for which they'd like me to agree to the pathetic half-step of merely reducing the size of the federal government and its budget by 25 percent next year and then, say, 20 percent in each successive year, they'll find I'm just as willing to 'reach across the aisle' as they are."

What do you say, incumbent big-government Nannyfascists and Socialublicans? Ready to start compromising on the rate at which the ball should move toward the goalposts you're defending? You're not going to dig in your heels and refuse to move an inch based on some hidebound leftist ideology, screeching that a reduction in the budget, power or regulatory authority of the federal government by a single iota would amount to the forcible starvation and murder of untold thousands of the innocent, admitting you were only interested in "compromise" when it served to advance the ball toward our goalposts and a victory for your side ... are you?

What kind of compromise is that?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.