"[D]espite their professed desire for compromise, voters hardly have rewarded President Obama for attempting to achieve it."
That's Yahoo! News writer Jane Sasseen's lament in her October 18 article, "Compromise on Capitol Hill: Is it really what Americans want?"
Sasseen answered in the negative, saying that although polling data shows, as it often does, that Americans want bipartisan cooperation, the electorate is moving in a quite different direction as evidenced by the way the November midterms appear to be headed:
By a large margin, 57 percent to 37 percent, Americans surveyed in the latest ABC News/Yahoo! News poll say they would rather that political leaders work across party lines, even if it means "compromising on important issues." It's a sentiment heard often across the country — and one that played a critical role in helping Barack Obama win the presidential election.
Yet voters have given the president little credit for the efforts he's made to cut deals with Republicans. At the same time, conservative candidates who are campaigning on the need for more ideological purity are enjoying the support of angry voters who are expected to turn out Nov. 2 in large numbers. The rebellion has been heavily backed by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has emerged as something of a hero on the right for railing against "watered-down Republicanism." He insists that the GOP would be better off winning a smaller minority that won't compromise on core conservative values rather than gaining a Senate majority if that means giving ground.
"The public is schizophrenic; they say they want compromise, but that flies in the face of the increasingly polarized candidates they vote for," says Greg Valliere, chief political strategist for the Potomac Research Group. "Barack Obama's experience is proof of that; he's been punished for his attempts at cooperation."
Sasseen went on to quote Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) lamenting that "[t]olerance for any deviation from party orthodoxy is at an all-time low."
"It used to be that principled compromise was thought to be a good thing. Now it's viewed as an act of treachery," Bayh griped.
Although Sasseen labeled Bayh a "moderate," he has a decidedly liberal voting history with a 22.45% lifetime conservative rating by the American Conservative Union (ACU).
Perhaps to the mainstream media, apparently, being conservative on one-fifth of the issues out there is compromise enough for liberals.
