On stupid-ass compromises

Or, give it away, give it away, give it away now.

Okay, so if my grandfather gave a rat's ass about politics, he would say, "What the hell kind of stupid compromise is this?" Once again the Democrats, the battered wives of the political world, have rolled over for the Republican majority. In case no one has told you, Senate Dems, a compromise is when both parties give something up, not when you give something up and they laugh at you behind your back.

The conditions of the fingerquote-compromise-unfingerquote reached by fourteen fairly moderate Republican and Democratic senators are that the Repubs won't take away the filibuster as long as the Dems promise to only use it under "extraordinary circumstances." And apparently, those circumstances don't include judges like much-debated Priscilla R. Owen, who had been for the Dems the poster child for objectionable appointments but is now hunky dory, along with Janice Rogers Brown and William H. Pryor.

Now, don't get me wrong - I am all about bipartisan cooperation, and I know that the rest of the country doesn't particularly care about Senate procedure as much as, say, education, or health care, or the environment. But this compromise is, to be a little bit frank, a load of horse poo. Dems have gone from voluntarily giving up their lunch money to flushing their own heads in the toilet and closing themselves in their lockers, in the hopes that the cool kids will like them more. Unity and cooperation can only go so far; there's only so much you can give up.

For the record, in case there was any question, the Republicans have given up precisely nothing. They've said that they wouldn't change 200 years of Senate precedence to disallow the filibuster. Well, folks, to do that would be wrong. The majority of American people know it, the majority of senators know it, there's a good chance they wouldn't be able to ban the filibuster anyway because even moderate Republicans know it would be wrong. The Republicans have volunteered to just not do the wrong thing, and in return, the Democrats have volunteered to back away from their principles and greenlight three judges that they've been blocking because they're too extreme for mainstream America and would be bad judges.

Democrats, I know it's hard to accept, but the cool kids will never like you. And the more you do their homework for them, the more you cover for them when they get caught smoking in the bathroom, the more lunch money you give them, the more they laugh about you in the locker room. This isn't the way to gain the respect of the Republicans, and it certainly isn't the way to gain the respect of the American people. There are times for compromise and times for backbone, and the Democrats aren't going to win a damn thing until they figure out when those times are.

Cross-posted at Hey Jenny Slater.