01-19-2017, 09:58 AM
(01-18-2017, 08:21 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Finally, the objective is NOT to win the vote to your side, but to find a compromise that is acceptable to a broad majority. We need to return to frameworks that promote reasoned inclusion of compromises, and exceptions where necessary, to create acceptable laws. Again, using the ACA as an example, it was passed by Democrats unilaterally with no compromise. It is now undone by Republicans in the same manner. Both are wrong.
If you want to encourage compromise, you first have to be able to recognize when someone is trying to. The ACA was, from the very beginning, an attempt to craft a health care program acceptable to Republicans. Bill Clinton's earlier, much more left-leaning plan, had been blown to pieces by Republican opposition; the ACA was already supposed to mollify those criticisms and garner bipartisan support. It follows a model dreamt up by the Heritage Foundation, and is closely based on the plan passed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. The *ideas* had broad republican support.
What was its fate? Republicans opposed every aspect of it, *especially* those designed to compromise with their earlier objections, and killed it dead. They weren't trying to pass a health care legislation. Mitch McConnell was trying to hand Obama a political defeat. How then to compromise?
-Jester