BRAVO! BRAVO! I posted this earlier, but it needs to be posted again:
"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.
Like you, Great Grandma, I'll take an 80% conservative McCain with a smile and joy over a 0% like Obama. And it doesn't mean we settle for McCain, as so many here seem to think you imply; it means you take the victories you can get - whether small or large - and keep working for more victories.
You NEVER reject a win because it's not by a large enough margin. That simply creates defeat, and in the game of politics, defeat is too terrible a price for the Nation to pay. Witness the current Administration's assault on these United States...
I only wish more in this thread had your sensibility, grandma! :)
IIRC it was RWR who said that "half a loaf is better than none." He meant that in a negotiation sense.
That is a very pragmatic and useful philosophy.
Thank you for understanding it. It really isn't that complicated but the extremists certainly don't get it.