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The Gipper said it best (the guy who created a new Cabinet Department and raised taxes four times and put Kennedy and O'Connor on the bench as president and gave Elizabeth Dole a springboard to the U. S. Senate-- all sins apparently)...

"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything. "I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'

"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.

--Ronald Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life

That's just not relevant. Reagan used to wheel and deal to get what he wanted, and Reagan was a solid conservative who had the meida and both houses against him when he permanenlty changed the tax structure and won a cold war. To him government was the problem.

What GWB is doing is by no means "compromise", it's a complete sellout capitulation.

That quote keeps getting thrown around here. The trouble is it doesn't apply. Conservatives aren't getting 80% of what they want. Liberals are getting 80% + of their agenda.

With this guy, conservatives would be very lucky to get 30% of what they want. Most might even be happy if he just didn't increase government more than Clinton did.

When conservatives are getting 80% of what they want, you won't need that qoute.

"The Gipper said it best (the guy who created a new Cabinet Department and raised taxes four times and put Kennedy and O'Connor on the bench as president...

'What I seek is the highest possible batting average... 'If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.'"

Hey, I love Reagan, but just what the h*ll kind of negotiator was he to have conservatives wind up with the likes of Kennedy and O'Connor??

The SC was and still is NOT the place to "compromise" on with 'singles-hitters.'

Hopefully Dubya will surprise us and appoint people who are capable of clearing the bases...