When do Democrats and Republicans compromise?
The situations in which Democrats and Republicans are more likely to compromise are ones in which there's an issue that comes up that is not a priority for the party. It's not one of their big platform priorities. It's not one of the things that they don't have a choice about because their constituency for the party says, "Don't mess with this," like abortion or something like that, which in the 80's and 90's was one of the key issues. If it's not a priority, the Democrats and Republicans are more likely to compromise because it's not going to hurt them as much with the electorate. So they compromise for policy reasons because they think, I'd rather get this policy forward, get what we can. The phrase in politics is, "I'd rather take half a loaf than try and go for a whole loaf and end up getting nothing because we tried for too much." So the idea is, I'll get some of what I want in there, and you'll get some of what you want in there, and because this isn't some big ideological controversy we can kind of compromise on these issues and get something of what we want in there. That's one of the main reasons why the parties tend to compromise. Another reason is because if they continued to get nothing done, that looks bad. So sometimes being able to claim an accomplishment on a particular issue that people are worried about, like social security or something else like that, they'll compromise even to the point of getting something that they don't really like just to be able to claim action on something. Then they can say, "Hey, you sent us up here, you're paying us, and we're actually doing something on these issues."
