I vote "war on terror" is the single most important thing we do, much more so than CFR. I vote "tax cuts" are far superior to expenditures for the Ed bill. So give me my tax cuts, and use the remaining money on Ed, if you must.
It is a false premise to juxtapose "principles" and "compromise." In fact, compromise is always about WHICH principles will triumph, because ALL cannot.
I went to the dictionary to paste in the definition of principle, and lo and behold, guess what I found?
The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments: a decision based on principle rather than expediency.
The idea of a principle is that it is not compromised. In fact, it's the baseline by which you are supposed to make other judgements...the standard if you will.