Posted on 06/09/2011 5:07:35 AM PDT by Sensei Ern
This is a personal experience so indulge me. Also, I still have a bit of Guinness hangover, so forgive the vague details. However, what I do write is the truth from the events that took place.
Last night, after doing a performance at the Iota Club in Arlington, VA, I needed to relax, to get rid of the adrenaline built up from performing. So, a buddy who came to see me perform invited me to go to a hookah bar nearby.
For those who do not know what hookah is, it is a communal pipe, cooled by water, that you smoke flavored tobacco, called sheesha, from. No, it's not wacky tobacky. Hookah bars have become more popular as the government has come down hard against public smoking.
We enter Gaupos and are seated near a young, 20ish guy who is smoking alone while pounding on his Apple. Being the people person I am, I ask him why he is sitting alone in a hookah bar. He explained he was working and was hookahing while doing so.
He explained he was the aid of a congressman from Pennsylvania. I'm not surprised, because half of DC is on the staff of some congressman. I assumed he was a democrat, because that has been the safe bet for the past few years.
But, he's not. He's a Republican, and works for a Republican congressman.
Anyway, here is where the details are sketchy.
I ask hiom if he is a Ron Paul Republican, because around DC, most of the 20ish Repubs are Ron Paul followers.
He explains he is not, and goes on to say, "I really hate the Tea Party, because they do not know how things work in DC. They do not realize that you need to compromise to get anything done. They are too new to politics to know how things are done."
I explained that he really does not understand the Tea Party. He comments how they love you one moment and hate you the next. I say, "The Tea Party is not new to politics. I personally am not a member of the Tea Party, but I have several friends who are. They are not new to politics. They have been involved in Republican politics for decades. They are just tired of the compromising that the Republicans in congress have done."
He had that deer in the headlights look.
I continued, "Compromise is how we got where we are now. What the Tea Party wants is for the Republicans to stand their ground and not give an inch."
"But, that is not how things get done in DC," he responds.
"We conservatives would rather congress not get ANYTHING done than to compromise."
More deer in the headlights look.
Compromise is the termite of principles. Any time you compromise, you are saying that is something you are not concerned about, because if you cared deeply about something, you would not waver in any way.
As a termite, compromise nibbles away at the base of your standards, and continues to eat away as much as it can, then, when you finally get to things you will not compromise, you no longer have a foundation on which to take a stand.
A politician is corruption personified and We The People intend to clean these politicians and their cesspool out.
Investigate, expose, try in court, and send to prison should be our motto.
The highway to hell is paved with good intentions. Compromise is the gas station at the rest stop.
I'm not the best at deciding when to ping the DC Chapter list. But I'll ping anyway because it happened in DC, it's germane to our current problems in DC, and it came from an unimpeachable source.
:-)
PING!
“you need to compromise to get anything done”
Politicians need to make deals to get things done.
By “compromise” he really means “make a losing deal”, but he doesn’t know it.
Calling losing ‘compromising’ is good for their egos.
-- Winston Churchill
-- G.K. Chesterton
What that 20-something staffer refuses to acknowledge is that the compromise only goes in one direction, like a ratchet gear. Democrats do not give up an inch. The “midline” for “compromise” gets moved after every concession by the Rs.
This coming from someone in his 20s....
...who reads the Gospel as revealed in The Hill newspaper, and Politico website. He might even go as far as talking to the writers for the Weekly Standard (Kristol and Barnes) or the National Review. But he does not access sites like FR, I am sure.
Agree with the comments being posted. Pubs compromise away while Rats do not, and expect the Pubs to do the compromising.
Good to see you have a gig in DC. More bucks than at Dave’s.
[Mr] T
“Compromise” in DC means the Republicans give in and the Democrats accept the deal. It’s much ike “bipartisanship”.
That's what you get when dealing with somebody who drinks from the Potomac.
I asked him what he was smoking. He assured me it was double apple sheesha. He must keep the hard stuff at home. Speaking of that, I suspect if we drug tested the staff members of the congressmen, that the congress would need to start looking for new helpers.
The drugs of choice among the younger aids are, pot, coke, and those that want to be “legal”, spice.
Republicans in Congress? There are tea party reps in Congress in the Republican party so it is not all one thing.
The Rinos hate conservative Republicans - they always have hated conservatives. They hated Reagan. The feeling is quite mutual.
I think your response to him was good.
Tea Partiers DO know how “things” work in DC and are fed up with it. Compromise means giving in to the progressives with government always moving to the left, growing, becoming more intrusive and powerful.
And get “things” done? What things? We don’t need more “things” from Washington. The USA would be utopia on earth already if more government involvement in our lives was the answer. Instead, what we’re living now sucks.
I hope the TParty doesn’t lose steam and can continue the cleanup in ‘12. That the House hasn’t defunded ObamaCare by now is a disgrace.
Thanks for the insight. Bet it was interesting. Hopefully you planted a seed.
However, I don’t believe all of the Republicans hate the Tea Party. Maybe frustrated that they now have to stand their ground with the status quo.
Maybe they’re finally getting the message that we no longer want “business as usual.”
This is what we get for hiring politicians and lawyers. We need more of the “peasants” helping make decisions. Like, bring in a group of ordinary citizens who know how to budget and let them decide which programs we can no longer afford.
There are some tea party candidates in office, and some non-tea partiers that got elected by tea partiers...take the senator from Mass, who got elected because he promised to be a vote against health care. But, he hates the tea party because we expect him to be conservative, and he isn’t.
Yes, Senator Brown was helped into office by the young Tea Party to take the seat of Kennedy away from the Democrats. The Democrats expressed their belief that they owned “Kennedy’s seat.” That election was psychological warfare and it demoralized the Left to kick off the Tea Party and demonstrate it’s power which the media was belittling as “atro-turf” at that point.
He won’t get that support for a re-election.
No, I believe conservatism can still be done and not compromise. The dems have demonstrated that they can refuse to give an inch in compromise, and still get many liberal items accomplished. If we refuse to compromise, and they refuse to compromise, then nothing gets done. During the time of stalemate, we can argue the conservative viewpoint to get the public on our side. At that time, we will get our conservative issues passed.
And, besides that, when the congress is in stalemate is when business flourishes because business tends to work best in times of stability.
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