Prickly City by Scott Stantis for February 24, 2009

That’s how people on the left do it. They view compromise as being people with opposing views coming over to their side.

On the right as well, dutchboy, but those who only want their way always think the other guy is being unreasonable.

Except, of course, that those on the right think that everyone that disagrees with them is “far left”. Wilson is correct here because Carmen’s view of the world is so distorted that she thinks he’s placing the sign near the left edge of the left-box.

Well, the common ground between the two of them should be halfway between where each was in yesterday’s strip.

But I do love how some readers have to stretch and contort in order to make Carmen wrong.

Consider some specifics, namely the recently-passed Stimulus package. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans were shut out of the writing of the bill; when they attempted to propose amendments in order to get their ideas considered, said amendments were rejected. There’s nothing illegal about that; since the Democrats have a commanding majority in the House, they have every right to run the place as they see fit. However, they can’t reasonably claim that they’re trying to find common ground while conducting their business in such a manner.

In the Senate, some compromise took place: specifically, the bare minimum that was needed to get a handful of Republicans to vote for closure and thus get the bill passed. Even there, the concessions made by the Democrats were largely token concessions. I have no doubt that if there were sixty Democrats in the Senate, there would have been exactly as much effort in courting Republican votes as there was in the House: that is, none worth speaking of.

Finally, once the two versions of the bill had passed the two Houses of Congress, a committee was organized in order to reconcile the two versions into a coherent whole that could be sent to the President. Most of the work done in that committee was done by Democrats; only after they had made most of the significant decisions were Republicans allowed into the meetings.

And now people are accusing Republicans of not being bipartisan because they (almost to a man) voted against a bill that had almost nothing in it that’s in keeping with conservative values.

No, this strip hits the nail on the head: what Democrats mean these days when they talk about “common ground” is for Democrats to get everything they want and for Republicans to roll over and at least pretend that they want it too.

And I thought Carmen was just “thinking outside the box”! <:-)

“And now people are accusing Republicans of not being bipartisan because they (almost to a man) voted against a bill that had almost nothing in it that’s in keeping with conservative values.”

Need I say more?

By that statement, you appear to be saying that in order for Republicans to be considered bipartisan, they have to abandon their conservative values. That actually supports _my_ point: that the current Democrat view of “compromise” is “do it our way.”

Might want to brush up on the definition of “compromise” there, dataweaver.

Compromise, the Democratic way.

AW-RIGHT! Who started bringing in the soap boxes. Great cartoon as always Scott. . Uh, Winslow, you might wanna move your finger from the top of that stake before hitting it with that hammer.

Compromise involves both sides giving some ground, in such a way that both sides get something that they want. As things stand, Democrats are refusing to give any ground; under these conditions, it doesn’t really matter what Republicans do: even if they give up on their conservative values and go along with the Democrats, that’s not a compromise; that’s capitulation.

You may think that Republicans should capitulate; but that’s a very different thing than saying that they’re to blame for the current lack of compromise.

“As things stand, Democrats are refusing to give any ground”

This is, of course, 100% wrong disguised as being 100% right. If you wanted to be 100% right, you would have continued the thought: “As things stand, Democrats are refusing to give any ground to the my-way-or-the-highway Republicans.”

Don’t forget dataweaver, I watched this bill closely and followed the Amendments (including the passing of the Amendment to strike money to Hollywood studios, for example). What the Democrats rejected was capitulation.

“100% right” vs. “100% wrong”? As if those were the only possible options…

Since dataweaver could not respond except to try to divert the conversation, I’ll steer it back to the comic at hand.

Stantis is missing two squares to the left of Wilson.

[Left][ ][Sign][Hole][Carmen]

Serves me right for trying to compromise…

(Incidently, it wasn’t “could not respond”; it was “chose not to respond”.)

And I’m pretty sure that Mr. Stanis has the correct number of panels.

Danielsangoe - He doth protest too much.

All you guys who say this is something Democrats are particularly guilty of must’ve pulled a Rip van Winkle the last eight years, when the Republican Congress did EXACTLY the same thing. They even physically blocked Democrats from entering the room, on occasion, routinely refused to consider Democratic amendments, etc. etc… Sad but true: what goes around comes around. You guys brought this on yourselves, and the only reason you’re complaining now is you’re on the receiving end of it this time. But we all know you were perfectly happy with this sort of thing when it was a Republican majority doing it.

shouldn’t that be in the middle