Art of compromise returns

(PNI) The intensely polar, partisan nature of modern American politics has produced a lot of side effects, few of them positive.

Hostility toward Congress -- now "enjoying" an 80 percent disapproval rate, according to the Real Clear Politics average of top polls -- has reached near-historic levels. It has gotten so bad that many frustrated voters now include their own member of Congress in their "throw the bums out" appraisals. Once upon a time, the local guy got a pass. No more.

The partisan rancor has become so strong, in fact, that even in the face of a very lopsided House vote to pass the first federal budget in four years, the predominant post-vote storyline out of Washington is about conflict -- in this case, between House Republican leaders and their conservative "tea party" wing.

"They're misleading their followers," said House Speaker John Boehner. "I just think they've lost all credibility."

Tea-party conservatives have been a strong influence in the Republican Party since galvanizing against President Barack Obama's health-care reforms in 2010. They had successes in those early days -- including the near-historic turnover in the House in 2010.

But lately, tea-party-backed candidates more often have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Democratic senators from Indiana, Delaware and Missouri occupy seats that at one time seemed ripe for Republican taking.

So, yes. There is tumult in Republican politics.

But the lopsided, amazingly bipartisan nature of Thursday's House vote suggests something else important may be going on, too. Perhaps leaders of both parties simply have failed to do a decent job of appealing to the "better angels" of their caucuses -- which is to nudge them into accepting certain compromises based on their own political self-interest.

The numbers of Thursday's vote tell a fascinating story about those self-interests.

The overall vote itself, 332-94, is a stunner. But the deeper numbers are more so. As Politico reported, Republicans had promised Democrats 120 votes in favor of the package. They got 171 GOP votes. The same from the other direction: Dem leaders promised 100 and produced 163.

Those numbers strongly suggest that while congressional Republicans may be conservative and even tea-party-oriented, those ideological influences affect members on a sliding scale. Their leaders did not need the surfeit of compromise votes they collected. But they got them, largely from members whose districts are at least marginally competitive.

The Arizona tally reflects that. All four of Arizona's Republican members -- nearly all from strongly conservative GOP districts -- opposed the deal. So did Democrat Raúl Grijalva, one of the most liberal House members, who (not surprisingly) hails from a safely liberal district.

Among the 32 Democrats opposing the deal were liberal stalwarts like John Conyers of Michigan, Louise Slaughter of New York and Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

But the most stunning "no" vote came from a Democratic House leader: Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat. His explanation was even more notable, in that it could have been uttered by any one of the nay-saying Arizona Republicans:

"This agreement is better than the alternative, but it misses a huge opportunity to do what the American people expect us to do, and that is to put this country on a fiscally sustainable path."

All of those harder-line Republicans and Democrats were afforded the luxury of their "conscience" votes by virtue of the willingness of others to compromise.

That willingness to accept something less than ideological purity is in the nature of American politics. It is nice to welcome it back. We could do with more of it.

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